Pioneers Dawn: The Rewrite
by andrewjameswilliams
Summary: *Rewrite of my ship of the line challenge response.* Janus unhappy with how things are being handled in Sunnydale and elsewhere by the Powers That Be decides to intervene and in so doing changes the destiny and fate of an entire planet forever.
1. Chapter 1

**Pioneers Dawn - The Rewrite**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own the characters that I am about to mangle around for my own amusement, sadly they remain the properties of their respective creators and I make absolutely no profit from their use. So please keep the lawyers firmly on a leash.**

 **Authors Note: This is my second attempt to write this response to Zaion's Ship of the Line challenge. While I am majorly sorry for having to abandon the original version I had written myself into a major corner plot wise and nothing I did seemed to be able to get me out of it. While much of this story will be the same as the original I will be making changes here and there until I get up to the place where it all went so wrong the first time around – which is around chapters six and seven.**

* * *

 **Chapter One**

 **Somewhere**

 **Sometime**

The being known as Janus frowned as he stood over his viewing pool watching events playing out in the mortal world. While his kind had little influence on the events taking place in the mortal realms these days, the result of a decree by the Creator brought about after they'd abused their powers one too many times, they could still look in on them. Which was precisely what he was doing now.

And he _really_ didn't like what he was seeing.

The Powers That Be and the Ascended were really making a mess of things; the Powers especially with that ridiculous idea they had for a balance between the forces of good and evil. The latter made it worse with their complete lack of interest in anything that went on with those they regarded as 'lower' beings; too afraid to act less they become as addicted to power as their Ori cousins had as he was well aware that they'd started out with the best of intentions only to become corrupted when they discovered something that he – like all deities – had always known, that the prayers of mortal beings were an extremely potent source of power.

With the temporal aspects of his power as the Old God of time, doorways and change Janus could see where events were going under both groups stewardship. What he saw wasn't good, in fact it was downright terrible.

The Powers had their mortal champions locked in an endless battle against the supernatural, a battle that if things didn't change soon could have very dire consequences. He could already see the destruction of The Seed of Wonder on the horizon, the tau lines indicated that that was a very probable future unless something changed fast. The Seeds destruction would temporarily end magic in the mortal world – or rather take out their ability to access it as magic was one of the fundamental forces on which the universe was built and thus couldn't be truly destroyed without destroying all of creation – would be very bad thing. After all though their rational minds didn't yet understand or accept it humans needed magic if they were to one day reach their full potential as a species and rise beyond simple ascension to energy beings – a potential his kind had nurtured since before the second iteration of the human race began recording time.

Thinking about it he wouldn't be surprised if that wasn't the Powers plan as they'd long hated humanities ability to use magic – something the Alterans before them had never had – as it could eventually lead to them being rendered basically redundant and thus powerless. Plus the end of magic – at least for a while as the Seed of Wonder would eventually regenerate itself – would let them do away with those other higher magical beings who they saw as competition, beings like the Elders and Angels of Destiny, allowing the Powers That Be to gain even more power than they had already and become even more arrogant and domineering over humanities destiny than they already were.

And if that wasn't bad enough the faction of humans known as Americans had reopened a door that would have been better left closed. Now they were out amid the stars far sooner than they ever should have been, facing threats that they weren't yet ready or even properly equipped to fight. Though they did not know it yet the Goa'uld System Lords were a minor threat compared to some of the things that prowled the universe. Any one of which could wipe out all life on Earth with no effort at all. While there were some who wanted to close the Stargate – though for hardly altruistic reasons as the true motivations of people like Senator Kinsey were an open book to him – it was already too late for that.

He was already aware that the System Lord Apophis was gathering his finest Jaffa army on two warships with which to attack and reconquer Earth. While he could see they'd repel the assault this time, and eventually make a peaceful contact with the powerful but steadily fading Asgard gaining a measure of protection against the egotistical, megalomaniacal parasites, it would only be a short term respite. Eventually they'd clash first with the Ori and then other higher as well as extra-dimensional threats like the Old Ones and without magic, or some other advantage, they would ultimately fall no matter how hard they fought.

The problem was what he could do about it. How could he shake things up and hopefully make the events to come turn out differently? There wasn't much; like all the Old Gods he had little ability to affect the mortal world at all anymore. Certainly he couldn't just change things at his whim in the way he and the others had once been able to. Power, which he had to admit, had gone to their heads more than once and in the end prompted the Creator to step in and issue the decree to stop there interference.

It presented him with quite the conundrum.

After a couple of minutes thought a possible solution occurred to him. The Creators Edict wasn't absolute; the Creator hadn't been so cruel as to cut him and the others off entirely from the mortal realms, there was a way he could intervene. The fact that doing so could cause those over officious Powers That Be to have the celestial equivalent of a heart attack would just be the icing on the cake, to borrow a delightful mortal phrase.

His solution was simple.

In just under four hours – as humans reckoned time – it would be All Hallows Eve. Janus was fully aware that one of his few remaining mortal followers had travelled to the most active Hellmouth on Earth; his intent to cause chaos on Halloween night using enchanted costumes. Ethan Rayne had been a useful servant in the past, even if he did like the chaotic aspects of his power more than any of the other divine magic's that he could command. And now he would use that to his advantage as it would be easy to hijack Ethan's spell and repurpose at least part of it to accomplish his goal. He would have to be careful of course and make the change look to be a natural side effect of the chaos magic, so the Powers wouldn't be able to scream foul, but it was doable. The repurposing of the spell would hurt Ethan a bit but that would be a small price to pay, and besides it would let him teach the chaos mage an important lesson, the lesson that he was primarily a god of change with chaos being only a small part of his aspect.

With the basics of a plan now in mind Janus waved a hand over the surface of the viewing pool, causing the image to change to show both Ethan Rayne's little shop and everything around it. _Now who to use,_ he thought gazing thoughtfully at the throng of young humans coming and going from the shop, determining just who he would use to hopefully change upcoming events for the better.

After a few moments of searching he spotted them.

One of the two current vampire slayers, Buffy Summers, the still unknowing witch Willow Rosenberg - he quickly made a mental note to have a word with the Elders about her, see if they could assign a whitelighter to assist her in learning magic properly as the girl was a powerhouse, and thus potentially the founding member of an entirely new magical bloodline, though she didn't know it yet - and his current favourite mortal, Alexander 'Xander' Harris. _Perfect,_ he thought smiling with both his faces at Alexander.

That young man had been quite the topic of conversation amongst the various pantheons since the moment he'd successfully defied prophecy – an unusual event to say the least as the magic underpinning prophecy was quite strong and only a true agent of free will could deny it. Since then he'd kept a very close eye on him and directly intervened on his behalf when the Powers had wanted to punish him for thwarting prophecy and in the process disrupting their precious balance as they'd not counted on the Slayer line ever being fissioned. In so doing by the ancient laws that bound celestial beings of all kinds, laws laid down by the Creator at the very beginning of the universe itself, he'd claimed him as a champion. And he was perfect for his purposes.

 _Now just a few things to arrange,_ he thought as he extended a small tendril of power to adjust some events that were to take place inside Ethan's shop. The first change he made was making the noble woman dress the Slayer would have been originally drawn to subliminally undesirable to her. At the same time he made someone else get the last toy gun in the shop. That would force his champion to find something else, something that he would be really able to work with. With a final little tweak he pulled back and watched to see what happened next.

* * *

 **Ethan's Costume Shop**

 **Sunnydale, That Same Time**

Alexander 'Xander' Harris resisted, just, the impulse to swear as he noticed that all the toy guns had vanished from the shelves. There went his plan for a two dollar costume using Uncle Rory's old army combat fatigues. _Just my luck,_ he thought with a sigh and wishing there was a convenient table for him to bang his head against till he got rid of the sudden surge of frustration.

"Something wrong, Xander," Buffy asked looking over at her best male friend.

"It's nothing, Buff," Xander answered with a second sigh, this one of pure resignation, before explaining. "It was just I was hoping to get away with not having to spend a lot as I already had a costume lined up for tonight. All I needed was one bit from here but now…"

"…it's gone," Buffy finished for him prompting an affirming nod.

"Yup," Xander confirmed, "since I can't go as a soldier without a gun I need to find something else."

"Hmm well thanks to that troll, Snyder I also need to find something," Buffy commented, "maybe we can have a look together. And maybe together we can both convince Willow to wear something other than a ghost costume."

Xander snorted. "Buffy we're more likely to get pigs to fly, or get all the fang faces in Sunnydale to turn vegetarian, than succeed in that," he pointed out. At the confused look the Slayer shot him he explained.

"Willow has gone as a ghost to every Halloween for as long as I can remember," he told her, "both myself and Jesse – God rest his soul – tried for years to get her to wear something else. We ended up giving up."

Buffy inwardly winced when Xander mentioned his lost best friend/brother in every way that mattered. She still felt guilty that she hadn't been able to prevent Jesse being turned as it was her own damned fault. She'd been so busy trying to escape her destiny as The Slayer at the time that she'd failed him, failed Willow and failed Xander – who'd ultimately been forced to drive a stake into the heart of the monster who'd worn his friends face to save Cordelia. Despite the blond-bimbo mask she sometimes wore she knew Xander was – to this day – haunted by Jesse's fate. And that it was one the things that drove him to fight the darkness, so no one else would know that pain, even though he had nothing really in the way of formal combat training.

Which now she thought about it she should really do something about.

She made a quick mental note to have a word with Giles about it later, see if she and the Watcher couldn't come up with some sort of training regime for Xander and Willow. After all it would tear her apart if one of them were to be killed due to lack of training or worse turned, forcing her to stake them. She mentally kicked herself for what now seemed like such an obvious, and unforgiveable, oversight on her part. Xander and Willow would get some training even if she had to train them herself.

A hand suddenly waving in front of her face brought her out of her thoughts and she jumped. "Sorry I was miles away," she admitted smiling sheepishly at Xander.

"Anything we need to be worried about?"

Realising that he was worried that she'd just had one of her Slayer Dreams/Visions warning of some new big bad on the horizon she was quick to reassure him. "Nah I just realised something though we'll talk about it later," she said firmly wanting to talk to Giles before she broke the idea of training with Xander and Willow. "So Willow won't wear anything other than a ghost costume?"

"Not a chance. Though if you want to try convincing her otherwise your welcome to," Xander answered, "hell you might have more luck with her than we ever did since you're a girl as well."

"I'll go have a word with her," Buffy decided. "Will you be alright searching for a costume?"

"I'll be fine go speak to Willow," Xander replied, gaining a nod from the Slayer before she wandered off in search of the quiet, meek redhead. Xander watched her wistfully, wishing he could have her as a girlfriend, even after what she'd done to him at the Bronze. But she was with Angel now, a thought that made him want to shiver in distaste. What Buffy saw in Angel he really didn't know, after all cursed with a human soul or not the man wasn't really a man but a vampire and always would be. Not to mention he always smelt vaguely of death, something Buffy was sure to be aware of but chose to ignore. _I do wish she'd stake his ass and be done with it,_ he thought, _but no she carries on a relationship with the walking, talking corpse. Which just proves one thing, girls are weird._

Putting Buffy's distasteful relationship with Angel out of his mind he turned to the serious purpose of finding a suitable costume for tonight. He began looking through the various costumes on offer. There were a few costumes from DC comics present but unfortunately none of them were in his size which was a pity as it would have been cool to dress up as Batman, Superman or even Green Lantern for the night. With a sigh of resignation he moved on to the next rack of costumes.

There was no help here either. All the costumes were of the traditional Halloween variety, all ghosts, ghouls, witches, werewolves and vampires. While he might have considered wearing one of them in the past, now that he knew the truth of the supernatural world he wasn't about to touch any of them. Not even with a ten foot barge pole – even though a few looked to be in his size. So he moved on again.

And immediately paused for a moment in shock as he saw the contents of the next rack. The costumes were from a certain anime series he, Willow and Jesse used to watch when they'd been kids. Some of the costumes looked a bit newer, a bit more with a modern take but they were clearly all Robotech costumes. Grinning slightly he began looking through them, searching for one that was both for a male and in his size. One particular costume caught his eye and he carefully lifted it out, it was a white and red officers uniform with a high collared black jacket-like cloak over the top. He immediately recognised it as the uniform Rick Hunter had been wearing as one of the senior officers attached to the SDF3 for the Pioneer mission in the aborted Robotech II: Sentinels series. A small bag was attached containing a large black wig and a few other accessories including a replica of a SAL-9 Laser Pistol.

 _Whoa who ever put this together obviously paid a lot of attention to detail. Which means its probably out of range of what I can afford,_ he thought before checking the price tag. And freezing in shock before checking again to make sure he wasn't imagining things. The entire get up was only fifteen dollars well within the range of what he could afford. A smug grin appeared on his face as he decided then and there that this would be his costume tonight.

"Found something Xander," Buffy suddenly asked from behind him, making him yelp slightly in surprise before spinning around to find Buffy and a dejected looking Willow standing there. Neither of whom had costumes yet.

"Don't do that," he replied, giving the blond haired Slayer a death glare for trying to give him a heart attack. Buffy winced and mouthed 'sorry' back, so he let her off the hook this time at least. "And yeah I have," he added holding up the uniform for his two female friends to see.

"No way," Willow exclaimed eyes widening as she recognised the uniform even though she hadn't quite been as into Robotech as Xander and Jesse had been. "I didn't realise they did Robotech costumes for Halloween."

"Ugh what's Robotech," Buffy asked and winced at the shocked and scandalised looks she got back off both Willow and Xander.

After a few moments of stunned silence that she didn't know Xander decided to enlighten her. "Robotech was a 80's anime Buffy," he explained, "in which three different generations of people fought off repeated waves of alien invaders all after a special ultra-clean power source called protoculture."

"Oh," Buffy replied. To her it sounded geeky as hell but she knew better than to say that out loud. Neither of her friends would let her hear the end of it if she did, plus they'd probably make her sit and watch every video tape of said series in retribution. "Well it's a very nice uniform, Xander. I'm glad one of us is having luck finding something to wear, nothing I've seen so far really catches my interest."

"They don't have any ghost costumes, Xander," Willow complained to her oldest friend – and not so secret crush. "What kind of costume shop doesn't have ghost costumes?"

Xander chuckled at the mildly outraged look on the redheads face. "Well then," he said a slight smirk appearing on his face even as he mentally thanked whoever was in charge for making sure Willow wouldn't be able to dress up as a ghost this time. "Looks like you won't be able to dress up as a ghost for a change, Wills. There are plenty of other costumes in this rack why don't you guys take a look?"

"I suppose it couldn't hurt," Buffy admitted, "come on Willow."

"Alright," Willow replied, still deeply unhappy about having to find something else to wear instead of her traditional ghost costume. Still if she had to wear a costume it would be nice if it was from one of hers, Xander's and Jesse's favourite childhood shows. It would be a nice way to honour Jesse, who'd been gone nearly a year now, and maybe, just maybe, it would get Xander to notice her more as a woman.

"Great," Xander answered. "I'll go pay for this then meet you girls outside, deal?"

"Deal," Buffy and Willow agreed, speaking almost in unison. Xander grinned back before heading over with his costume to pay while his two fellow Scoobies resumed their search for costumes. _Maybe,_ Xander thought as he arrived at the back of checkout queue, _despite Snyder's best efforts tonight won't be so bad after all._

* * *

 **Summers Residence**

 **A Short Time Later**

"So where are you meeting, Angel?"

Buffy smiled slightly at Willow's question even as she finished putting the final touches on the costume she'd acquired from Ethan's. Like Xander and Willow she'd been able to acquire the costume from the stock of Robotech costumes and, while she had no real idea just who the character Admiral Lisa Hayes was, she had to admit it looked good on her.

"Here after trick-or-treating moms going to be out so we'll have the house to ourselves," she replied before looking at the bathroom door. "Okay, Willow come on out. You can't hide in their all night."

"O…okay but promise you won't laugh?" Willow stammered back, her voice thick with nerves at being seen wearing what she was wearing. Buffy resisted, just, the impulse to roll her eyes not for the first time wondering just how Willow hoped to get Xander to notice her developing womanhood if she was nervous about appearing in anything remotely sexy.

"I promise," she assured the red head.

Slowly, nervously, the door opened and Willow – her very demeanour screaming meek, little mouse instead of the attractive woman she was maturing into – stepped out. She was dressed in a light blue military uniform with a skirt that stopped just above her knees. The uniform was a tight fit, outlining nicely all the curves that Willow was really starting to develop. On her head in place of her normal red hair, Willow – like Buffy herself – was wearing a wig, though hers was a lighter shade of red unlike the hazel brown of the one she was wearing – that framed her face. _Wow that looks real good on her,_ she thought with a smile, _Willow's really starting to become hot. Now if only I could get her to realise that particular fact, then she'd really start giving even Cordelia a run for her money in the attracting boys department._

"Wow," she said with a smile. "Willow you look a dish."

Willow frowned. "No I don't I look terrible," she replied looking down and fidgeting uncomfortably in the uniform. "I wish they'd had a ghost costume I could have worn."

Buffy sighed. "Willow…" she started to open her mouth to admonish her friend for being so negative about her own appearance, but before any sound could emerge from her lips the doorbell sounded. "That will be, Xander. Cheer up, Wills you'll be fine. Trust me you'll blow, Xander away."

With that she turned and started to head downstairs to let their Xander-shaped friend in. Willow sighed and watched the Slayer leave, filling out the Sentinel's era uniform she was wearing very well indeed. She wished she could believe Buffy that this tight fitting uniform would really blow Xander away, and get him to notice her as a woman, but she wasn't at all sure that it would. But since Ethan's had lacked ghost costumes, the rack where they would have been having been empty indicating they'd probably already been sold out, she had no choice but to wear this get up. Mentally she tried to picture herself more as Ensign Samantha 'Sammy' Porter, and tried to inject some military confidence into her manner. After all as Buffy had pointed out earlier Halloween was about pretending to be someone else.

It helped somewhat.

* * *

Reaching the bottom of the stairs Buffy sighed to herself. She so wished Willow wasn't so negative about her appearance all the time, wasn't so lacking in self-confidence. Though the latter was hardly a new thing for Willow, at least according to Xander, as despite her very high intelligence – or possibly because of it – Willow had lacked self-confidence for years. Though Xander had also said she'd gotten better recently, ever since they started helping her with her calling. _Maybe the training I'll give them both will help,_ she thought making another mental note to discuss the issue of getting her friends some defence training with Giles later.

Reaching the door she pushed those thoughts aside for now and opened it. "Admiral Hunter reporting for duty," Xander joked with a mock salute as he stood there on the porch, prompting Buffy to blink as she saw him actually in the uniform he'd picked up. She had to admit he looked good in it, better than good in fact he looked well… hot… in that uniform. It was quite tight fitting and as she scanned him she couldn't help but notice that Xander had a very solid, muscular build. _Damn how I have never noticed that before is beyond me. No wonder, Cordelia keeps sneaking glances at him when she thinks nobody's looking,_ she thought feeling her face warm slightly and looking up at his face to distract herself. To see an amused pair of blue eyes looking back at her… wait blue eyes?

"You look good Buff. You pull off Lisa well. Now are you going to let me in?" Xander asked both amused and flattered at the way she was checking him out. _Huh maybe my chances with her aren't so dead after all,_ he thought.

"Oh right sorry," Buffy said blushing and stepping aside, in typical Sunnydale fashion, to allow him to enter. "What's with the blue eyes, Xander?"

"Contacts," Xander replied with a grin, "they were in the accessory pack. It was major strange looking in the mirror after I put them in."

"Blue eyes suite you though Xander," Buffy replied as smirking as she shut the door. "Now just wait till you see, Willow," she added moving to the base of the stairs. "Come on, Willow come down."

"B…but," Willow yelled back.

"Wills if you don't come down we're going to be late," Buffy shot back, "you want Snyder to give us detention for a month?"

For a few moments there was silence, and Buffy began to fear that Willow would indeed chicken out of coming down, then Willow appeared at the top to the stairs and slightly unsteady in her stiletto shoes began descending. Buffy watched cautiously, knowing this was Willow's first time in stiletto's and knowing from her own experience that it was easy to fall in them, at least till you got used to wearing them.

The moment Willow reached the bottom of the stairs Xander blinked. _Wow, Willow is getting hot,_ he thought, _not that I'll ever date her, would be too much like trying to date a sister if I had one._ He of course recognised the outfit as being that of one of the SDF-1's Bridge Bunnies, from the light red wig he was guessing Sammy. "Wow Willow you look great," he said smiling.

Willow blushed slightly. "Ugh thanks, Xander," she replied, inwardly dancing in victory as she saw the look that briefly came into his eyes. Eyes that she suddenly noticed were not their normal colour. "You don't look so bad yourself. But what's with the blue eyes contacts?"

"Yup. As I told, Buffy they came in the accessory pack. Think it really makes me look the part don't you?"

"It does," Willow agreed. "But we should get going."

"True we don't want to give the troll an excuse to chuck us all in detention," Xander agreed. "Though what he's got against the three of us I really don't know."

"I wish I knew," Buffy agreed as she picked up her house keys from a side table and slipped them into the pocket of her uniform, "maybe he's just mean. Come on, times a wasting."

Xander and Willow both nodded in agreement. Being closest to the door Xander opened it and gestured for the girls to go first, then he followed them out making sure to close the door behind him. Then without further comment the three uniform clad friends began making their way towards Sunnydale High School to pick up their charges for the evening.

* * *

 **Back of Ethan's Shop**

 **Two Hours Later**

Ethan Rayne smiled as he observed dusk give way to the deep darkness of a moonless night. After all his preparation it was time to begin the complex incantations that would summon the power of Janus and allow chaos to reign over Sunnydale. Quickly he closed the curtains over the back window and began carefully lighting the black candles around the room and the idol of Janus.

Once that was accomplished he knelt before the shrine and produced a small athame, the double edged steel knife engraved with a variety of mystical symbols, from his pocket and held the blade between his hands. Calmly he pressed both palms against the blades razor-sharp edges, wincing lightly at the slight stabs of pain it send shooting up his arms. Allowing the ceremonial knife to fall to the floor he gazed at his bleeding palms; the cuts were not that serious, certainly they were nothing a simple healing spell couldn't cure later, before getting started on the first part of the ritual to call upon the power of Janus.

"The world that denies thee, thou inhabit," he chanted dabbing the blood in his left hand with his right middle finger before drawing a line of blood over his right eyelid, "the peace that ignores thee, thou corrupt," he repeated the process with his left middle finger, right hand and left eyelid before drawing a bloody cross on his forehead, "chaos I remain, as ever, thy faithful, degenerate son."

In front of him the idol began to glow a soft green and the features on the side facing him changed into that of a monstrous male figure. He had succeeded in gaining the attention of his patron god. With a mounting sense of ecstasy he began the most important part of the ritual, the weaving of the spell.

"Janus, evoco vestram animam," the Latin incantation rolling easily off his tongue. "Exaudi meam causam. Carpe noctem pro consilio vestro. Veni, appare et nobis monstra quod est infinita potestas. Persona se corpum et sanguium commutandum est. Vestra sancta praesentia concrescet viscera. Janus! Sume noctem!"

The soft glow of the idol brightened and pulsed, before bursting outwards in a rippling wave of energy that rapidly swept over Sunnydale. As it touched those wearing the tainted costumes they're very existence changed and twisted. Ethan smiled maliciously as he felt the magic surge through him and sensed the spell beginning to do its work.

"Showtime," he muttered softly before gasping as pain suddenly blossomed in his chest. The magic from the idol was still surging through him, going on for far longer than he had anticipated. He could feel it starting to drain his own store of magical power, a store built up over all his years of faithful service to chaos. _Ugh something's not right did I make a mistake in the incantation or something,_ he thought doubling over as the sensation manifested as intense pain similar to that caused by a heart attack.

His vision began to grey out at the edges and, realising he needed to stop the spell now before whatever mistake he'd made in the casting killed him, he tried to reach out to knock the idol of Janus off its plinth and out of the ring. An act which would destroy the idol and cause the spell to collapse unable to sustain itself without a focus. But before he could do so the pain ceased and exhausted he fell over backwards, the world going dark as consciousness fled his body.

* * *

 **Authors Note: The biggest change here is of course Willow dressing up as Sammy Porter instead of Lynn Minmei. I made the decision to change who she dressed as after remembering that at this point in the Buffy timeline Willow is determined to try and attract Xander's attention to make him her boyfriend – though why she could never see that she's more Xander's sister than anything I really don't know - hence the tight fitting uniform. Plus as a few reviewers pointed out originally Lynn Minmei just didn't really work for Willow hence why I changed it.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Pioneers Dawn - The Rewrite**

 **Disclaimer: I do not own the characters that I am about to mangle around for my own amusement, sadly they remain the properties of their respective creators and I make absolutely no profit from their use. So please keep the lawyers firmly on a leash.**

* * *

 **Chapter Two**

The wave of magic unleashed by Ethan Rayne swept across Sunnydale like a silent, invisible tsunami of arcane energy. As the wave encountered those costumes which had been previously enchanted by Ethan Rayne reality changed. Face paint became skin, masks became bone, muscle and flesh instead of simply moulded, coloured plastic while simultaneously altering – sometimes radically – the biology of the costumes wearer into that of whichever ghoul, demon or monster they had originally dressed as.

Through his viewing pool Janus observed the mystical energies spreading, changing and warping reality according to the tenants of his worshippers spell. As the spell reached the Scoobies, and a few other individuals he'd chosen for this particular task, he reached out with his power and began to more precisely sculpt the outcome of the transformations as they began to take place. Before extending another tendril of his power reached across the dimensional barriers to a part of the multiverse where the anime characters they were dressed as were real people.

In an instant he created a precise copy of one of the key ships of the series humanity in the dimension he was concerned with knew as Robotech. Precise down to the smallest detail, with one critical exception he didn't duplicate any of the crew as that was far beyond his – and indeed any of the Old Gods – abilities as only the Creator was capable of creating, or in this case duplicating, souls. After making a few more minor changes to the ship, including the installation of a very specific piece of technology, it was ready. So with a quick tug of power he removed his copied ship from its reality and deposited it in a high orbit of the Scoobies dimensions Earth, adjusting its quantum and magical signatures as he did so, so no one would be able to tell the ship hadn't been created by the chaos spell cast by Ethan Rayne. _One final task,_ he thought quickly transporting a handful of craft from the bigger ship to Sunnydale before he withdraw his power and sat back to watch.

And see what happened next.

* * *

 **Sunnydale**

 **A Few Moments Later**

Admiral Rick Hunter groaned softly as he opened his eyes to find himself lying flat out on an asphalt surface. _Ugh what hit me,_ he thought sitting up and looking around in incredulous confusion. He appeared to be on Earth, somewhere in small town America if he guessed right, but he didn't understand how that could be. The last thing he remembered was being aboard the SDF-3 _Pioneer_ as she orbited a newly liberated Tirol; he'd been with Lisa, the rest of the senior expedition members and Cabell to determine what was to happen to the planet now that it had been abandoned by the Robotech Masters before being devastated by the Regents attack. So how had he gotten back here to Earth, tens of thousands of light years from the Valvierre System and Tirol?

Deciding he would get no answers sitting here on his butt he stood up and gazed around. His confusion only grew as he recognized vehicles that hadn't existed since the Rain of Death, their manufacturing companies – like so much else – having been wiped from existence by the apocalypse Dolza had unleashed on the helpless planet. Had he somehow been transported back in time?

His apparent temporal dislocation wasn't the only thing that was strange about his current circumstances. There were aliens the likes of which he had never seen before running around causing absolute havoc. He couldn't help but jump as a car alarm went off behind him, startling him as it was a sound he hadn't heard since before making that fateful journey to Macross Island and the ill-fated christening/launch ceremony of the SDF-1.

"Okay Rick what have you been swept up in now," he said to himself. A loud roar from off to the right caught his attention and he turned to see what looked like a stereotypical werewolf coming towards him, salvia dripping from its fangs and feral yellow eyes alight with primal hunger and a fierce predatory intelligence. _You have got to be kidding me,_ he thought. _A werewolf! Or at least an alien that looks like a werewolf, and who looks like he wants to disembowel me right here. Better dissuade he/she/it whatever of that notion._ Without hesitation he withdrew his sidearm and fired a warning shot.

A bright whitish-blue beam of compressed, supercharged photons shot out from the SAL-9 Laser Pistol, striking the ground directly in front of the werewolf-like alien. Instantly and with a resounding crack the intense focused energy of the beam vaporised a chunk of asphalt throwing up a cloud of noxious smelling steam and smoke. Immediately the 'werewolf' ceased its approach emitting a confused puppy-like yap, it sounded so bizarre that he couldn't help but chuckle. Before firing another shot, deliberately aiming past. The lycanthrope winced as the laser passed close enough to its body for the creature to feel the intense heat of the beam against its fur covered skin as well as smell the ionisation trail left by the passage of the intense stream of energy.

Deciding that it didn't want to tangle with this thing firing at it, knowing instinctively that it would not survive a direct strike from one of the light beams, the werewolf emitted a howl of fury and defeat. Before turning and running off to seek some easier prey to sate its gnawing hunger. _Well at least it has brains enough to know tangling with a laser beam would be bad for its health,_ Rick thought watching the seemingly mythical creature retreat, tail metaphorically tucked between its legs.

It was at that moment that a female voice he hadn't heard in years reached his ears. "Help," the voice called out prompting him to spin around. To see a ghost from the past running towards him in the form of one Ensign Sammy Porter – one of the trio of SDF-1 bridge techs known as both the Bridge Bunnies and the Terrible Trio. She was dressed much as she had been when he'd last seen her, before her death alongside the likes of Claudia and Admiral Gloval during Khyron's last attack on New Macross, with a host of child-sized monsters – for lack of a better description – chasing after her. Without hesitation he acted, raising his sidearm and firing at one of the leading creatures threatening his fellow officer. The beam slammed into the creatures' torso with immense force producing a puff of smoke and flame from where its clothing was hit, even as the red-scaled, horned alien was knocked onto its ass, emitting a roar of combined surprise, incredulity, fury and pain.

The other creatures immediately froze. While the one he'd hit slowly, obviously painfully picked itself up off the floor a vivid black burn on its scaly chest showing where the blast had hit it. Rick blinked in surprise as a laser strike like that should have killed it outright unless its skin was some kind of natural armour, though even then the beam should have burned through. After all like all directed energy sidearms issued to the RDF/REF the SAL-9 had been designed with lessons learned from the study of Zentraedi sidearms in mind. There was no armour known to exist that the beam couldn't penetrate. _Until now that is,_ Rick thought as the wounded creature seemed to decide to – rather than risk another extremely painful laser hit – exercise the better part of valour. Emitting a roar it turned and began running away, the other creatures following it but not before shooting fearful glances at the SAL-9 Rick was still holding.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Sammy said before bending over and gasping as she struggled to get her breath back. When she was sure she could speak without wanting to throw up she looked up to see just who her saviour was, and blinked in surprise. While the face was older than she remembered, and the somewhat flamboyant uniform he was wearing of an unfamiliar design, she recognised him easily. "Captain Hunter, sir."

"It's Admiral Hunter now, Sammy," Rick replied and resisted, just, the impulse to laugh as the other officer's eyes went wide in surprise. "I know this is going to sound a strange question but how did you get here?"

"I have no idea," Sammy admitted rubbing the back of her neck with one hand in a nervous habit she'd inadvertently picked up off Claudia. "One moment I'm on the bridge of the SDF-1 as we were just about to fire on Khyron's cruiser the next I'm here, wherever here is, with that posse of monsters baying for my blood. Sir may I say you look… different."

"I know I do," Rick replied before delivering his bombshell. "The reason being that for me that last battle with Khyron, it took place eleven years ago."

The light red haired bridge tech gaped at him. "We've travelled in time?" she exclaimed "how can that be? I thought time travel was impossible."

"Supposedly it is. But then again how often since the initial arrival of the SDF-1 did we see the impossible become possible? I don't know how, or why it's happened, just that it has."

Sammy acknowledged that point with a nod. "What are we going to do? How are we going to get back?" she asked calmly, using military discipline to clamp down on both the near instinctual panic at this situation and her worries for Kim, Vanessa and the rest of the bridge crew.

"I don't know," Rick admitted, "but one things for sure we need to find some shelter, given what's going on," he gestured to the chaos around them, "staying here on the street would not be a good idea." Sammy nodded her head in agreement as staying out here in this madness would not exactly be conducive to keeping them alive and unharmed long enough to get back to their own times.

For a moment she considered asking Captain… no Admiral… Hunter about the future, about how he'd ended up an admiral and about her friends before deciding she didn't want to know. While she knew she had a reputation for being a bit of a ditz at times she hadn't missed the look on the other officer's face when he'd seen her… the look of someone who was looking at a ghost. She really didn't want to know why Rick had gotten that particular expression on his face.

Abruptly the communicator on Rick's left wrist chimed and vibrated. After slipping his sidearm back into his belt holster he checked the offending device, frowning as he did so as no one in this apparent time should be able to access it. The moment the screen came to life he smiled slightly as he realised that neither himself nor Sammy were alone. There were a number of additional RDF/REF identification transponders broadcasting, with one broadcasting brighter indicating either a rendezvous point or an emergency locator beacon – the watches computer wasn't sophisticated enough to differentiate the two signals, especially at this range.

"Looks like we're not only ones who've been transported back to whatever year this is," he said. "I'm picking up some additional location beacons. Including one set up as a rendezvous point."

Sammy smiled happy to learn that despite the circumstances they found themselves in, however they'd been sent back in time, that they weren't alone. Others were here as well. Her smile turned into a frown as she saw Rick scowling slightly, clearly puzzled by something he was seeing. "What is it?" she asked.

"Something strange three of the signals are moving incredibly quickly," Rick answered, "they're heading right towards us. They should come into this street any second now." He looked in the direction the signals would appear from, Sammy followed his gaze and waited.

After a moment three high-tech looking motorcycles, two a soft grey colour the other a quite vibrant red, came around a bend and entered the street. At the sight of them Rick's eyes widened in a combination of shock and recognition. _Cyclones,_ he thought incredulous as seeing working models of the infantry mecha meant to replace the current Tornado battle bike which, while a powerful machine and capable of limited mechamorphosis it, wasn't powerful or versatile enough to face enemies as powerful as the Invid in infantry combat, _but that's impossible. They're still in the early prototype stage of development so how can these three be here?_

A marked suspicion began to grow in his mind, even as the group of veritech motorbikes slowed and came to a stop. They were being ridden by an eclectic group of people if ever there was one. Two of the riders were males, one wearing the kind of durable, functional clothing that had become popular in the years since the Rain of Death with people who lived in more remote areas without or with only limited access to one of the major population centres like New York which had escaped the Zentraedi bombardment or those established afterwards like Monument City. The other wearing an REF uniform that looked similar to the ones they'd been thinking of introducing to the Expeditionary Force and the whole RDF – replacing the slightly more flamboyant Army of the Southern Cross inspired uniforms that were the current standard. Both men were wearing an armour over the top of their clothes that looked like a hard version of the current CVR-2 flexi-armour REF infantry and veritech fighter pilots wore. Like the Cyclone itself he recognised it as being CVR-3 armour, which like the mecha it was meant to work with, was still undergoing R&D testing.

The other two riders were girls. One with long honey blond hair, wearing a red bodysuit with white highlights. Like the two men she was wearing a hard body armour over the top but while the boys armour was a mixture of the normal cream, grey and olive tones hers was a fiery red. The final rider, who was on the back of the uniformed man's Cyclone with her arms wrapped securely around him, had pinkish red hair and was wearing a brown jacket with a light blue tank top underneath and jeans.

For a moment more nothing happened and Rick got the distinct impression that they were as surprised to see him as he was to see them. Which he could kind of understand as from the uniform the one man was wearing, and the Cyclones themselves, they probably came from a point further down the timeline than he did. Finally though the uniformed man who, from his position in the pack of bikes, appeared to be the leader flipped up the translucent blue helmet visor revealing the face of a young man in his mid-twenties.

"Admiral Hunter? Is that you sir?" the man asked a note of equal parts uncertainty and suspicion in his voice. Rick carefully studied him noticing the unit patch – which he understandably didn't recognise as it probably hadn't been formed yet – along with the rank insignia of a lieutenant commander. _Bit young for the rank though I can't say anything about that since I was a full commander and leader of Skull Squadron by the time I was twenty-three,_ he thought, _not to mention I'm only thirty four now and I'm a damned admiral._

"Yes," Rick confirmed, "and you are?"

"Lieutenant Commander Scott Bernard, 21st Combat Wing, Mars Division sir," the man answered. "Sir if I maybe so bold what's with the old uniform?"

"Hey Scott," the other man said before Rick could answer Commander Bernard. "Any idea what's going on here yet? First we all wake up here wherever here is and now this?"

"I have no idea, Rand," Scott admitted.

"We've all travelled in time," Rick explained, "as to my uniform well that's easily explained as from Commander Bernard's uniform and your mecha you're from a future point in the timeline than myself and Ensign Porter. For me the year it's 2024."

"2013 for me," Sammy added helpfully.

"We're from 2044," Rand confirmed with a frown. _This mystery just gets deeper and deeper_ , he thought. "How did we get here? Wherever and whenever here is?"

"I have no idea exactly where we are but I have a reasonably good idea when we are. Take a look around," Rick answered. "From the style of these vehicles we're in the mid nineteen nineties, just before the Global Civil War really kicked off and before the arrival of the SDF-1. And if I had to guess from the air temperature we're somewhere in what were the southern states of the old United States of America."

"How can you tell, sir," Scott asked curious.

"Because I grew up in Northern California. Until I was nineteen I never left it for more than a few days at a time, usually to go to various amateur flying competitions or performances of pop's air circus," Rick replied before smiling slightly nostalgic as he remembered to his days with his father's flying circus. He'd been so innocent back then, so naïve and more immature than he'd liked to admit. Had still been when Roy had sent him that fateful invitation to attend the commissioning ceremony of the SDF-1, an invitation that had changed his life so dramatically and irrevocably; after all if he'd not attended he'd have never have gotten stranded out near Pluto with everyone else, would never have become a soldier and would never have met his beloved wife.

He mentally shook himself, there would be time to get nostalgic later. "So who are your other companions, Commander Bernard," he asked.

"Oh right sorry, sir," Scott answered cheeks colouring in embarrassment as he realised he'd not really introduced everyone. He gestured over his shoulder at the oddly quiet pink-haired woman. "This sir is my girlfriend Ariel, the motor mouth back there is Rand."

"Hey," Rand objected.

"Pretty apt description for you," Rook commented smirking, which earned her a glare from the wisecracking Argentinean survivalist turned freedom fighter. A glare which had absolutely no effect on the blond haired half-Zentraedi woman. She looked over at Rick and had to admit he looked very handsome though she couldn't say she cared for the somewhat flamboyant, almost Roman uniform though it did fit the uniforms favoured at the time he apparently came from, Sammy's first gen RDF uniform also looked right. "I'm Rook by the way, Rook Bartley."

Rick raised an eyebrow. "Any relation to Kyle Bartley?" he asked curious as last time he'd seen the disgraced veritech pilot turned reporter he'd just gotten married to an ex-Zentraedi warrior named Vala Norri.

"My father," Rook confirmed a little surprised that he knew her father. Then mentally kicking herself as she remembered that her father had once been a veritech pilot on SDF-1 and thus would have certainly interacted with Rick Hunter on a regular basis.

"Sir are you the source of the signal we were following," Scott asked, "after we woke up we picked up an REF homing signal and started heading towards it."

"No that's coming from somewhere over in that direction," Rick pointed down the street. "We were just about to head there ourselves."

"Oh, well hop on. We can all go," Scott suggested.

"Sticking together would be a good idea," Rick agreed. "Alright Sammy why don't you hop on behind Ms Bartley. If that's alright with Ms Bartley."

"No problem," Rook agreed.

"No problem giving a lift here either," Rand added seeing the sense in them all sticking together at least till they figured out just what the hell was going on here. And why himself, Rook, Scott and Ariel were the only ones of their group here. Since they'd woken up here, whenever it was, there had been no sign of Lancer, Annie or Lunk nor had they responded when attempts were made to contact them via radio. Even Ariel couldn't find them with her weird Invid psychic abilities. There complete inability to find or make contact with them had really set mental alarm bells ringing for all of them.

"Commander Bernard I'll send you the coordinates to the rendezvous point," Rick stated activating his watch and forwarding the coordinates of the rendezvous point to the navigation system of Commander Bernard's Cyclone.

"I've got them sir," Scott confirmed as they flashed up on his control panel's mini-map screen. A screen he really didn't have much chance to use while battling the Invid as they'd shot down all the RDF's GPS satellites after they drove the remains of the ASC naval forces that had beaten the Robotech Masters away from Earth. Thus he hadn't thought to check for the beacon coordinates on that particular system, assuming it could link to the more primitive and less accurate GPS systems of this time.

"Then we better get going," Rick decided before gesturing for Sammy to move over to Rook's Cyclone and climb on behind her. A few moments later he was climbing onto the other Cyclone behind Rand.

Seconds later they were all on their way again, racing towards the homing beacon all hoping they would at last get some answers as to what they were all doing here.

* * *

 **Stargate Command**

 **Cheyenne Mountain Complex**

 **That Same Time**

Major General George Hammond was lost in thought as he stood by the briefing room windows gazing down at the silent, dark Stargate. Just over five hours ago Colonel O'Neill and the rest of SG-1 had, in defiance of the Congressional shutdown order currently on the SGC, overridden the security systems and travelled through the gate to a set of coordinates that Dr Jackson had brought back from an alternate reality. A reality in which Earth was being steadily bombed into oblivion by the forces of the Goa'uld System Lord Apophis in retribution both for the trouble they'd caused Apophis personally and the death of Supreme System Lord Ra.

An attempt to send SG-2 and SG-3 to retrieve them, so that both Colonel O'Neill and Captain Carter could face court martial for their blatant defiance of orders, had failed. The coordinates had refused to lock a second time. At first they'd thought that Captain Carter had left a little viral surprise for them in the dialling computers, she had after all written the software they ran on and would thus know how to breach the firewalls and circumvent the anti-viral safeguards without being obvious about it, to prevent them following them. But that had soon been ruled out when they'd been able to successfully dial the Alpha Site. Which meant that for some reason Doctor Jackson's coordinates simply were no longer valid and he didn't want to think what that could mean.

"Sir," a voice said from behind him as the reflection of Master Sergeant Norman Walter Harriman appeared in the ballistic glass.

"What is it, Sergeant?" George asked turning to look at the other man. Immediately he noticed the grim look on the other man's face which instantly set all manner of alarm bells ringing in his head.

"Sir near orbit radar reports that a large anomalous contact has just appeared in the sky above Northern California," Harriman reported. "There was no warning, one minute it wasn't there then it was. Whatever it is it's in a stationary orbit directly over a small town called Sunnydale."

"Any idea what it is," George queried a look of concern appearing on his face as he spoke.

"We believe it to be a ship. A very big ship. However we did not pick up any sign of the vessel approaching, which means it's probably been there for a while just cloaked somehow."

"How big a ship?"

"From the radar reports the vessel is over seventeen hundred meters long and five hundred and eighteen meters wide. We've tried to contact them but so far there has been no response from the crew. We're trying to get a hold of one of the observatories in the Sierra Nevada's to see if they can get a look at the vessel, so far we've had no success. Also I'm afraid that's not the only bit of bad news that I have."

 _Never rains but it pours hey George,_ he thought. "Go on," he said to prompt the other man knowing he wasn't going to like whatever else he had to say. Hell he didn't like what he'd heard already; that an alien spaceship just over five times the length and just under seven times the width of one of the Navy's Nimitz-class supercarriers had mysteriously appeared in orbit, without any warning whatsoever, was cause for great concern.

Especially as it wouldn't take long for someone on the ground to spot it – a ship that big would be easy to see from the surface with any half decent pair of binoculars if the night was clear enough – and tip off the media. Which could at best start a media feeding frenzy about first contact and at worst lead to a public panic. Neither outcome was something the US Government and Military would want to deal with just now; or ever which was why they'd kept the existence of the Stargate a secret even after the threat of the Goa'uld became known.

"Deep space radar has picked up two large blips passing Saturn, projections indicate that they're on a direct course to Earth. Radar calculates that at their current rate of speed the contacts will reach planetary orbit in just under four hours. NASA's repositioning Hubble now so we can get a better look at them."

 _Oh shit,_ George thought looking away from him, back down at the Stargate, a cold knot of dread forming in his stomach. He had no idea what the first contact could be, though it was almost certain to be a ship, but he had a very good idea what the incoming ships were, who they belonged to and why they were coming to Earth. For a moment he wondered if the two groups were connected but then decided that they couldn't be. If the first ship over California had been Goa'uld then they would already be under attack; from that position the first ship could effortlessly decimate the most populous state in the union before moving on to wipe out the entire West Coast all the way up to British Columbia and Alaska. Hell if that ship had been there for a long time, just hidden by a Star Trek-style cloaking device, and had had hostile intentions they would likely have all been dead long ago.

"I guess Doctor Jackson is lucky," he said softly.

"Why's that sir," Harriman asked curious.

"That he's not going to be here to see his nightmare come true a second time," George replied, before turning and marching back into his office and picking up the red phone. A phone that connected straight to the White House. "This is Major General Hammond. I need to talk to the President."

"Yes sir please stand by," a White House operator responded immediately. After a moment there was a click and President Marcel came on the line.

"Yes General Hammond what is it?"

"Mister President we have a very serious problem."

* * *

 **Sunnydale**

 **California, A Few Minutes Later**

Riding on the back of the Cyclones, in spite of the chaos that seemed to be reigning over this small town, it didn't take the assembled Robotech soldiers and the members of Scott Bernard's resistance cell long to reach the source of the homing signal. Twice during their journey some of the various alien creatures had tried to accost them, only for a few well aimed warning shots from the proton cannon on Rand's Cyclone to persuade them that they were too much trouble to attack. Which was something Rick was thankful for as he climbed off the back of the aforementioned Cyclone.

The source of the signal appeared to be coming from within an area walled off with white plasterboards like those used on construction sites prior to the Rain of Death. Which from the signs and warnings was what was beyond the barrier. Both the display on Rick's watch/wrist computer and the navigational systems on the three Cyclones confirmed that to be the case.

"How to do we get in," Rand asked seeing nothing but a wall of white boards covered in various signs and warnings though he wasn't that familiar with their meanings. After all in the time he came from building on a large scale by anyone other than the Invid – who'd been building or rather growing more and more hives as their numbers increased before Ariel convinced the Regis to leave Earth to its rightful inhabitants – like this had been completely non-existent, most people being barely able to keep their homes from falling down. "Switch to battle armour and flyover?"

"That would be a bit of a waste of energy and we can't afford to deplete the power cells on your Cyclones too much given the protoculture matrix isn't even on the planet yet," Rick pointed out, "there will be an entrance somewhere around here we just need to find it."

Without waiting for a response he began looking for the entrance. He quickly found it took metal mesh covered gates bound together by a bolt along with a thick heavy duty chain and padlock. "Over here," he called back to the others while taking his laser pistol from its quick-draw holster on his belt. A single well-aimed blast was all it took to slice off the padlock allowing him to carefully unwind the chain holding the gates closed. A moment later he had the bolt pulled back and the gates were opening on very squeaky hinges.

"Someone's bound to have heard that," Scott commented as he felt Ariel slip off the back of his Cyclone already knowing what he was going to do next. A flick of a switch and the Cyclone began to change, standing up quickly he felt it wrapping around him forming into a complex suite of powered armour that made a single modern infantry soldier more powerful and dangerous than an entire battalion of pre-Robotech troops even with armour support. From behind him he heard Rook tell Sammy to get off before she and Rand copied his action.

The faint whirling sound of mechamorphosis behind him had Rick spinning around, just in time to see the three Cyclones shift into armour mode making each of the riders look like a vastly scaled down, but still extremely dangerous, battloid. It was the same sort of principle the Tornado had worked with though nowhere near as well hence why Dr Lang and the Robotech Research Group had started Project: Cyclone. He couldn't help but smile slightly as the part of him that would always be the cocky pilot said 'cool' and 'I have so got to try that'. "Good thinking," he said aloud a clear note of approval in his voice.

"Sir might I suggest we scout inside first," Scott asked.

"Good idea, Commander proceed."

"Yes sir," Scott acknowledged before leading Rand and Rook into the building site. It seemed to be abandoned but only temporarily as everywhere he could see stacks of building materials covered in tarpaulins or still encased in plastic wrapping to protect it from the elements. Cautious they moved deeper inside.

They soon found the source of the homing signal they'd been following.

Sitting on a large concrete slab in the centre of the site were three spacecraft. Two were Alpha fighters with Beta fighters attached to the back. But it was the third craft sitting in the middle that really grabbed their attention. It had a vaguely rectangular structure and was narrower towards the bow forming a prow. Like a mutant toad it sat there on three large skids, a door and ramp were deployed from one side.

"Is that what I think it is," Rand asked feeling a shiver go down his spine as memories from his childhood stirred, of seeing craft like that raining destruction down on Earth's already battered cities.

"If you're thinking it's a Tirolian Roil Tiluvo-class attack corvette you'd be right," Scott confirmed.

"Oh hell does that mean the Robotech Masters are here," Rand exclaimed eyes looking around frantically as if expecting bioroids to jump out from behind the building supplies and start shooting ion bolts at them.

"No look at its markings," Scott said gesturing to the craft. Rand did so and blinked when he saw REF markings on the side of the craft. At the confused look Rand shot him Scott explained. "The REF got its hands on loads of them after we booted the Invid Regent off Tirol after he fired on the Expeditionary Force without warning or provocation. Until the Horizon-series was developed a decade ago our time they served as transports and support craft replacing the old Gossamer and Star Goose shuttles."

"So why'd you stop using them?" Rand asked.

"Logistics, Rand. All Tirol's shipyards were destroyed by the Regent. Once the stockpiles of spare parts ran out that was it for the attack corvettes. The A, B and G Horizon configurations do the same jobs these things used to do. And they're a lot easier to maintain."

Rand nodded in understanding, relaxing as he realised that the Robotech Masters weren't here. He'd only been a small child when the Second Robotech War ended, even younger than Annie, but he well remembered seeing bioroids and suicidal clones destroying just about everything in their path during the Masters last desperate assault on Earth.

Scott for his part activated his helmet comm. "Sir the sites clear," he reported to Admiral Hunter, "and we've found the source of the beacon signal."

"What is it," Rick's voice responded.

"There are two Alpha/Beta combination fighters and a Tirolian corvette in REF colours," Scott replied "it's the corvette that's broadcasting the homing signal."

"Any sign of the crews?"

"No sir and their engines are completely cold. They've been here for a while sir, hours at least."

"Very strange why bring a pair of combined fighters and a corvette here then leave them completely unattended," Rick commented. "This mystery just keeps growing and growing. We'll be right there in a few moments. In the meantime get in one of the fighters and see if you can access the flight computer."

Even though he knew the admiral wouldn't be able to see him Scott nodded. "Yes sir," he acknowledged before signing off and going down onto his knees, before giving the command for the Cyclone to disengage from armour mode.

"Why do you want to access the flight computer, Scott," Rand asked watching his blue haired friend stand back up clad only in his CVR armour now, before pulling the Cyclone upright into its normal motorcycle form.

"The fighter's computer should contain a record of just where that corvette and these veritechs came from and how long they've been here," Scott replied walking up to the closest Alpha and hopping in before beginning to tap away at the controls.

"Oh yeah I forgot about those," Rand answered mentally kicking himself for forgetting it, the flight data records were one of the first things Scott and Lancer had taught him and Rook about when they'd taught them how to fly Alpha fighters. And not just how to fly them; but fly them in combat and make full use of their mechamorphic abilities and vast arsenals of weaponry.

Scott made a surprised noise. "That's odd," he said a puzzled look on his face as he scanned the screens.

"What is it?" Rook asked.

"There is no data here," Scott replied, "navigational records are completely blank beyond stored coordinates that is. It's almost like the navigational computers not been used, power usage records, engine power and performance records everything is blank. It's like this fighters never been used before."

"So what it just appeared here like we did," Rand asked.

"Very likely," Scott agreed before frowning. "And it looks like us, these fighters and that corvette aren't the only ones caught up in whatever this is. Navigation has detected an IFF beacon – there's a ship in low orbit it's one of ours."

"Can you tell which ship it is," Rick asked as he came up with Sammy and the still silent Ariel in tow, clearly having heard what he'd just said about the orbiting starship.

"Yes sir I can," Scott confirmed checking the screens. "It's the SDF-3."

* * *

 **Authors Notes: Obviously the biggest single changes in this one from the original are modifications to the scene with Rick at the beginning to take into account Sammy Porter instead of Lynn Minmei and of course the replacement of four of the fighters with a Tirolian corvette. Its appearance is important to one of the really big changes I have planned for chapter three. I hope that the explanation for at least one being attached to the SDF-3 made sense.**

 **On the issue of the Horizons about various RPG aspects we figured that the design of the Horizon is actually highly modular as that fits in with the REF's pattern of highly modular ships like the Garfish. In the case of the Horizon the model is represented by a letter like the transport cargo ship the T version is the one we've seen on screen. The versions I mentioned here are the A version which is a heavy assault corvette armed with very heavy weapons and a large battery of heavy reflex missiles. The B version is basically a heavy bomber version like a Beta fighter on steroids but minus the mechamorphic abilities. Finally the G version is a gunship bristling with rapid fire pulse lasers and particle cannons designed primarily as an escort and support craft for hostile fighter/mecha suppression.**

 **As for why I changed the ground craft from the original. Well you'll find that one out in the next chapter.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Pioneers Dawn: The Rewrite**

 **Author Note: Just a reminder that as always with my Stargate fics conversation in bold is a Goa'uld speaking while conversation in bold italics is a symbiote talking to their host. Now then without further ado let's get on with the chapter.**

 **Disclaimer: I still do not own the characters that I am about to mangle around for my own amusement, so please no legal action I have no money to give anyone.**

* * *

 **Chapter Three**

 **Elsewhere In Sunnydale**

 **That Same Time**

Admiral Lisa Hayes swore colourfully as she ducked down behind a convenient dumpster, just in time to avoid a thrown bottle that crashed into the wall and shattered. Showering the wall, and her, with its contents that from the smell was alcohol as well as small fragments of glass. _Blah that was close,_ she thought wrinkling her nose in disgust at the smell of the cheap whisky that had filled the former bottle.

For a moment she took stock of her situation. It wasn't good as she was clearly trapped as the alley she'd just run down ended predictably in a brick wall. A wall that was far too high for her to even attempt climbing over even if she'd had something to gain purchase on, which she didn't. _What else can go wrong tonight,_ she thought as she'd been running from these things, and dodging the odd thrown bottle or other such projectile, for the last half an hour. Practically ever since she'd woken up here seemingly transported through time and space to what appeared to be Earth – and an Earth that from the style of the architecture and the vehicles was a pre-Rain of Death Earth, possibly even a pre-robotechnology Earth given most of the vehicles seemed to have internal combustion engines – which had been phased out in favour of the far more efficient, not to mention cleaner, hydrogen fuel cells during the decade between the arrival of the alien ship that became the SDF-1 and the coming of the Zentraedi to retrieve said ship.

Quite how this had happened she had absolutely no idea. The last thing she remembered was being aboard the SDF-3 _Pioneer_ in the quarters she shared with Rick after a long, hard day of discussions about what to do with Tirol now that the Regent and his Invid had been booted off the planet – but not before leaving much of the planet in ruins. As she recalled she'd been in bed, cuddled up to her beloved husband, and drifting off to sleep.

Next she was here, wherever and whenever here, was. Thankfully whatever had transported her here had dressed her in a clean uniform it would have been extremely embarrassing – not to mention more than a little chilly – to have been stark naked when she'd woken up on that pavement.

She'd awoken to a scene that she could only describe as being absolute pandemonium with strange alien creatures, which looked for all the world like various goblins and demons from common mythology, running amok. A few of them had tried to attack her, thankfully though she'd found her uniform also included the standard SAL-9 laser pistol sidearm – along with bizarrely enough a sharp wooden stake in one back pocket – which had made scaring the mostly pint sized aliens/demons relatively easy. A few beams whizzing past their ears – or whatever it was they heard with – had been enough to send even the most ferocious of the little monsters running with their metaphorical tails firmly tucked between their legs.

With her safety secured she'd been able to turn her attention to her vibrating watch computer. To find that she apparently wasn't the only one to have been somehow brought back here to the past. Others were here as well, seemingly scattered all over the place, and that someone had set up a rendezvous point. Unable to establish radio communication, presumably because she was out of range, she'd started heading in the direction of the rendezvous.

Which had brought her to her current situation as she'd been about to turn down another street when the three men who'd chased her in here, men whose features seemed oddly distorted with glowing yellow eyes filled with a truly feral intelligence, overly pronounced brow ridges and fangs of all things. Instinctively knowing that whatever these things were they a) weren't really men and b) meant to kill her she'd turned and run down numerous side streets and alleyways, the creatures chasing her the whole way, until she'd gotten here.

Lisa growled slightly as she heard the three men-things laughing at having gotten her cornered. _Oh no you don't you're not going to get me without a fight_ she thought drawing her pistol and pointing it right at the man on the right.

Without hesitation she fired. Instantly the blue-white lance of supercharged compressed photons beam shot out and smashed into the man faster than he could blink let alone react. What happened next was truly shocking.

The man-thing she'd hit convulsed as the laser ripped into his body, before emitting a truly unearthly scream of surprise, pain and mortal terror as he suddenly erupted into flames. The inferno enveloping his entire body in less than a second, it was almost like he had been doused in petrol or some other such accelerant though she'd smelt nothing of the sort on any of the three men-things when they'd first ambushed her. _What the hell? If he's not doused in accelerant then how's he burning up so fast, yeah I know lasers and particle beams are hot but they're not hot enough to set a person on fire like that,_ she thought stunned only to become more incredulous as the immolated man-thing seemed to suddenly just implode. His outline disintegrating in a final flash of flame, leaving a small little pile of smouldering ashes on the floor marking where he had once been standing.

For a few seconds the other two men-monsters gaped in shock at where their fellow had once been, the laser-induced manner of his fiery death seemingly having taken them by the same total surprise that it had taken her. There shock allowed Lisa a few critical seconds to shake off her own surprise at what had just taken place, aim at the man or whatever he was to the left and fire. As with the first person she'd hit he convulsed, then screeched in pain and terror before dissolving first into flames then smouldering dust-like ash. The third emitted a deep, animal like growl that definitely didn't belong in coming out of a human throat.

"You killed Jake and Steve, I'm going to drain you dry for that, Slayer," he snarled but before he could move another laser beam, this time from somewhere off to the side, somewhere Lisa couldn't see, struck him. As with the other two the man-thing screamed in agony as the blast of energy drilled into his body instantly setting clothing and flesh aflame. In an instant he too was gone reduced to a third small mound of hot, dusty ash on the floor.

Lisa sighed in relief and stood up keeping her pistol handy, just in case, cautiously moved towards the front of the alleyway. Just as a familiar blue-haired figure appeared a laser pistol identical to hers held in its hand. Even in the gloom of the alleyway she could easily make out the fact that the figure was both male and wearing glasses.

Which meant it could only be one person as there was only one man she knew who had blue hair and wore glasses. "Nice timing, Max," she said stepping out into the light and holstering her pistol.

"You're welcome, Lisa," Captain Maximillian Sterling answered, holstering his own pistol. "Now do you mind telling me what in the name of space is going on around here? One minute I'm getting ready to go on duty the next I'm here wherever and whenever here is. And what we're those things? Why'd they call you Slayer?"

"I wish I knew, Max," Lisa admitted, "I have no more idea what's going on here than you do as like you one minute I was in mine and Rick's quarters on the SDF-3 next I was here. Somehow we've been transported through both time and space back here to Earth, a pre-robotechnology Earth if I'm not mistaken, and we're not alone."

"You've noticed the signals as well huh," Max commented not surprised, Lisa always tended to be on the ball with these things the only time he'd known her not to be was when Rick was involved. Then Lisa, quite understandably, could easily get knocked off balance especially if danger was involved – he was the same with Miriya even though he knew full well the micronized former-Zentraedi warrior could look after herself.

"Yeah I did. I was heading in that direction when those things, whatever they were, attacked me." As she finished speaking Lisa checked her watch to determine just how far from their destination they were, it only seemed to be a few more streets away. She also noticed that a number of signals had already arrived at the location, only a small handful were left further away. In fact one was now only a few feet from her and Max's current location and advancing quickly towards them.

"Looks like we're going to have company," she said gesturing to the entrance to a side street a moment before a tall blond-haired man wearing one of the old-style flight suits stepped out. Lisa and Max both recognised him instantly and froze in shock, even as the man turned to look at them – doing a double take of his own at the sight of them.

"Lisa is that you," Commander Roy Fokker asked gaping as he saw Lisa dressed in an unfamiliar red and black uniform with gold highlights, a uniform with the stars of a full admiral on the collar. A man he vaguely recognised as being a member of Rick's Vermillion Squadron was standing behind her, dressed in a similar uniform though his was primarily blue and white with black highlights. He was wearing the rank insignia of a captain.

"Roy Fokker?" Lisa exclaimed her brain busily interrogating her eyes about the impossible sight before her. "Impossible… you're… you're dead."

"Nah ugh not me," Roy replied frowning. "I'm alive and what the hell is going on? What's with the different uniforms?"

"You must have been caught in whatever this is just like we were," Lisa mused, "Roy this is going to sound strange but could you tell us what year you think it is?"

Roy scowled. "What year?" he repeated looking at Lisa as if she'd gone nuts.

"Humour me."

"Okay its 2011, March 7th if you want to be precise," Roy replied, and saw the look the two exchanged, which sent a shiver of worry down his spine. "It's not 2011 for you is it?"

"No for me it's 2024," Lisa replied.

"2025 for me," Max added.

"Huh you're from different times?" Roy exclaimed "guess that explains the uniforms and why you've got admirals stars on your collar Lisa. And why you thought…" His voice trailed off for a moment as understanding came. "I bought it didn't I?" he asked a cold feeling of dread forming in his stomach.

"Yes," Lisa admitted.

"Jesus. Okay, okay how did we all get here," Roy asked putting the news that he'd died on the mental back burner for now, there would be time to think about, or rather brood about, that later.

"I have no idea," Lisa admitted, "last thing I remember before waking up here was being in mine and Rick's quarters. Max remembers being just about to go on duty."

"Wait, wait you and Rick?" Roy queried stunned. "You're together?"

"I guess that would be a bit surprising to you," Lisa admitted. "Especially as Rick was still chasing Minmei around in your time, but we're more than together in mine. Rick's not my boyfriend anymore, he's not even my fiancée… he's my husband."

"You're serious?"

"Very," Lisa replied.

"I… I see," Roy stammered back mind going numb with shock. Oh he'd suspected for more than a year that there was something, a spark of attraction, between Rick and Lisa. The sexual tension between them – that had tended to manifest in blazing rows often over the comm. to the amusement of both listening pilots, Claudia and the bridge bunnies – had been obvious to everyone on the SDF-1. Well everyone except the two extremely stubborn persons involved that was; Lisa had kept insisting that Rick was cocky, immature and undeserving of the responsibility placed on his shoulders as a squadron leader. Rick for his part had continued to accuse her of being an inflexible old sourpuss who wouldn't know how to relax if it walked up and bit her. Though to be fair they hadn't argued quite so vehemently since their escape from that Zentraedi battleship. More than once since that experience he'd seen the way they looked at each other when they thought the other wasn't looking.

But he would never, not in a million years, have expected them to stop denying their feelings. And apparently do far more than that given both had stubborn streaks as big as a planet. Said stubborn streaks, combined with the fact that both had strong alpha personalities that had to have the last word in an argument, kind of made it hard to believe that they'd ever admit that they loved each other let alone get married.

"Commander Fokker." Lisa's voice in full command tone jolted him out of his stunned state and he reflexively moved to stand at attention. "Stand easy you can go into shock over mine and Rick's exact relationship later right now we have other more pressing matters to attend to."

"You're right I'm sorry," Roy answered shaking off the last of the shock-generated mental cobwebs. "So we've all travelled in time?"

"And space but yes," Max answered. "My self and Lisa were aboard the SDF-3 orbiting a distant planet called Tirol. Though don't ask how we all got here neither of us has any idea."

"We should continue towards the rendezvous point shown on our watch computers," Lisa said firmly deciding on a course of action. "Maybe some of those already there will have some real idea what's actually going on around here."

"Maybe we should try contacting whoever's there," Max suggested. "We should be close enough now for the radios in our watches to make contact."

"Good point," Lisa agreed knowing that while the radio in a comm. watch/wrist computer was short range – aboard ship or in groundside REF facilities long range communication was achieved through internal signal relays – they should be close enough to make contact now. She raised her watch and decided to try. "This is Admiral Lisa Hayes to whoever is at the rendezvous point being detected on our wrist computers," she said formally using her maiden name as she always did in her professional life – it prevented confusion in the ranks given Rick was also an admiral albeit one rank below her, "if anyone can hear me, please respond on this channel."

"Lisa," a familiar voice answered as the screen changed to show Rick. "You got caught up in this as well huh?" A concerned look appeared on his face as he noticed her somewhat flushed features. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine, Rick don't worry. And yes I did get caught up in this time space distortion whatever it is," Lisa replied smiling feeling more than a little relieved that whatever else was going on she'd be facing it alongside her beloved husband. "What about you are you alright?"

"I'm fine. Where are you and are you alone?"

"I'm about a mile or two from your current location. And I've got two others with me. One is Max the other… Rick you'd better brace yourself… the other person here with me is Roy." She wasn't surprised when Rick gasped before looking down and away at the mention of Roy. She knew full well how just much Rick still missed him, how much pain Roy's death during the war still caused him and how much suddenly knowing he was here alive again would shake him up.

After a few moments Rick seemed to pull himself together and looked back up, though not immediately at her. She could see his lips moving as he spoke to someone who was present with him but lip reading had never been her strongest skill. She got the vague impression that he was giving somebody some orders but couldn't read his lips well enough to determine exactly what orders he was giving. After a few moments he nodded, clearly acknowledging something presumably a response to whatever orders he'd given, before looking back at her. Though his face was composed she could see a tell-tale shine in his expressive blue eyes that indicated he was holding back his emotions – especially those that would have been triggered by a living, breathing Roy being here.

"Lisa I'm sending some people to meet you and bring you here," he said his voice admirably level. "They're on the backs of production model Cyclones so they'll be with you in just a few minutes. Then once everyone's here we can make our way up to the ship."

"Understood Rick we'll be waiting for them," Lisa replied before registering the last part of his statement. "There's a ship in orbit? Is it one of ours?"

Rick nodded. "The _Pioneer's_ in orbit I've tried contacting them however there has been no response beyond an automatic acknowledgement from the communications array," he replied, "it's almost like there is nobody aboard her either that or the entire crew has somehow been incapacitated, which like this entire situation doesn't make any sense at all."

"No it doesn't," Lisa agreed instantly feeling more than a small amount of concern about the SDF-3, and that fact that there appeared to be nobody aboard her. As Rick had said the situation made absolutely no sense at all but then neither had their whole night so far. "Hopefully we'll be able to get some answers soon."

"We can but hope," Rick answered. "I better go finish getting these fighters and the corvette ready to launch for when everyone's here. See you in a few minutes, Hunter out." Rick's image disappeared as he closed the channel from his end allowing Lisa to lower her arm.

"What are Cyclones," Roy asked curious as he naturally didn't recognise the name.

"They're a type of infantry mecha that's supposed to have similar mechamorphic abilities as veritech fighters do only switching between a motorcycle and a suit of powered combat armour instead of the three modes of a veritech," Max explained. "They're still experimental right now, or rather they are in our time. Given Rick said production model the ones coming for us, along with their riders, are likely from a point further down the timeline. Just like you're from an earlier point in the timeline."

"They sound cool," Roy commented inwardly already itching to try one out. He wondered if you needed specialist training to use one in the same way that you did a veritech fighter.

"You're not going to find out how cool they are, whatever they are," an English voice with a distinct cockney accent said from behind them making them all spin around. To come face to face with a tall platinum blond haired man, a few more men all dressed in dark clothing and a host of the little aliens/demons they'd all seen earlier stood around him. "I'm going to give you one chance," the man said grinning in an evil fashion. "Surrender her," he gestured to Lisa, "to me and I might let the other two of you go alive."

"I don't think so," Lisa replied drawing her SAL-9 sidearm, aware that Max was doing the same while Roy pulled out a semi-automatic hand gun.

The man chuckled. "Aren't you forgetting something, Slayer," he asked with an amused smirk on his face, "bullets can't kill vampires."

 _There's that name again,_ Lisa though, _why do people keep referring to me as Slayer?_ She smirked back regardless. "Who says this gun fires bullets," she replied before snapping the pistol up and firing a laser blast at the closest of the men. The man shrieked inhumanly as the beam instantly set skin and clothing on fire, before disintegrating into a smouldering pile of dust on the floor.

"You were saying," Lisa asked smirking at the gobsmacked platinum blond. A blond who shook himself, throwing off his surprise at seeing a real life directed energy weapon in action and the ease with which the beam from said weapon had ripped one of his kind apart. Then he snarled inhumanly as his features shifted and changed assuming the same yellow eyed distorted look as the three beings she'd encountered earlier.

"Get them," Spike yelled at the small posse of minions he'd assembled. Lisa, Max and Roy braced themselves as the hoard of creatures roared a variety of battle cries.

Then began to charge…

…only for a bright yellow-white bolt of laser power to come shooting down from somewhere above and behind them. The bolt of compressed photons slammed into the first group of charging monsters and instantly vaporised them even as the concussion wave of the explosion sent the others – including the platinum blond ringleader – reeling. A second blast of energy – this one bluish white and ovoid in shape – followed slamming into the right flank of assembled monster posse with the same lethal effect.

Then two mecha appeared, landing then standing in front of them protectively. Lisa and Max both immediately recognised one as a Spartas veritech hover tank in battloid mode, its laser cannon gunpod being held like a rifle and aimed unerringly on the remaining creatures as they struggled to get their wits back ready to start blazing away if they took any more aggressive action. The other was a huge red bioroid though the design was somewhat different to the few they'd seen on Tirol. For one it appeared to be larger and more angular with the front of the cockpit module being covered by what looked like a plane of blackened glass. A large drum-like ion blaster was held in one of the bioroids hands and like the laser gunpod it was aimed unerringly at the assembled monsters.

"I'm going to give you one chance," a male voice said from the external speakers of the Spartas, "leave now and you'll live, stay and fight and you die."

Spike for his part glared angrily at the huge hulking machines. He had absolutely no idea what the hell they were, they were completely unlike anything he'd ever seen in his century or so of unlife. He didn't doubt that the mysterious man speaking meant what he said, and he didn't doubt that he would do what he said and kill them all. _Fine you win this one, Slayer,_ he thought before glaring at the Slayer – and the energy pistol she was holding that was aimed right at his unbeating heart. If she fired at this range he wouldn't have any chance of evading the beam and the painful, if quick, death it brought by immolation.

He sneered at the Slayer. "Until next time," he said before turning and running away, his minions and the few surviving mini-demons he'd assembled running after him.

"That was close," Roy commented as the two battloids turned to look at them. While he didn't recognise them the lack of alarm being shown by Max and Lisa at their presence convinced him that they were friendly. _Not that we'd be able to do anything on foot against battloids if they were to turn hostile,_ he thought even as the one battloid began changing morphing from a giant battle robot into some kind of hover tank that didn't look anything like the Centaur hover tanks he was familiar with. _But then if like Lisa and Max it's from the future then it's probably a more advanced descendant of the Centaur,_ he thought remembering that the Centaur had been developed back in 2004 out of Project: Excalibur and like Excalibur's other product the destroids it had been developed in a time before they really understood the basics of robotechnology – let alone were able to properly apply the incredible abilities it allowed.

The veritech completed its transformation from a battloid into a tank. No sooner than it did so than a tall male figure in elaborate gladiatorial-style armour stood up from an open cockpit. _Open cockpit that's a stupid design decision,_ Roy thought, _what on Earth were the design team thinking when they did that? They may as well have just placed a target marker for enemy snipers on the pilot._

He was brought out of his thoughts when the tank pilot flipped up the visor of an incredibly elaborate helmet that was clearly designed more for aesthetics than strict functionality, revealing the face of a man about his age. For a moment the man's eyes scanned them, then widened as he beheld Lisa and Max. "Admiral Hayes, Captain Sterling you're here too," he said sounding shocked to see them even as he hopped down off the Spartas and stood at attention before saluting.

"That we are," Lisa admitted as she returned the salute. "Stand easy and identify yourself soldier."

"Oh right sorry ma'am," the soldier replied as he slipped into the normal parade rest stance of feet shoulder width apart and hands clasped behind his back. "Second Lieutenant Angelo Dante, 15th Alpha Tactical Armoured Core of the Army of the Southern Cross at your service. Ma'am may I ask if you know what the bloody hell is going on around here? One minute I'm with some others from my squad evacuating a bunch of clone refugees from one of the Robotech Masters motherships the next I'm here with a pair of werewolves and a Frankenstein monster of all things chasing me. If Zor here hadn't come along and chased them off, before showing me where a Spartas was, they'd have gotten me for sure."

"I wish we knew lieutenant," Lisa replied blinking and frowning at the mention of Zor. All the data they had, which had been admittedly inherited mostly from the Zentraedi, indicated that he was dead. Then she remembered Cabell telling them that the Masters had cloned Zor repeatedly and attempted to download copies of the originals memories – taken from said individuals lifeless body – into the clones in the hopes of learning the secrets of the protoculture, especially the production matrix and how to make another one. Thus it was very possible that the Zor that Lieutenant Dante was referring to was in fact a clone. She also noted the mention of the Robotech Masters and their massive motherships – motherships that had been absent from Tirol orbit when they'd arrived, apparently having departed a year or so earlier without warning leaving the planet wide open for the Invid Regent to invade as its remaining planetary defence systems had been antiquated to say the least – and made a mental note to ask him about it later.

"All we know is ourselves and a few others – not to mention the SDF-3 – have all become caught in some kind of space-time distortion and transported here to a pre-Robotech Earth," she continued. "We all also appear to come from different time periods. What year are you from?"

"2030 ma'am. June 16th if you would like the exact date."

"I hate to break this up but my sensors have detected three mecha approaching rapidly," Zor abruptly said startling them all. "The design is unfamiliar but they are being powered by protoculture modules."

"It's alright we've been expecting them," Lisa replied a moment before, with a rumble of engines, the three Cyclones Rick had sent there way turned into their street.

"Are they what I think they are," Dante asked, raising an eyebrow. He'd heard some of the reinforcements they'd received a week or so ago from the Expeditionary Force, from his perspective of course, talking about some new transformable motorbike mecha that Dr Lang's team had just developed for infantry use. They sounded powerful and versatile in away the hover tank – itself a highly versatile product of robotechnology – could never be. _Damn what were they called,_ he thought wracking his brain to see if he could remember the name.

"If you're thinking they're production model Cyclones then yes there are," Max replied as the Cyclones came up to them and stopped, the riders looking at the towering bioroid though without any real concern as between Scorpion micro plasma missiles and proton beam weapons they easily had enough firepower to reduce it to scrap metal in short order should it turn hostile.

After a moment one of the riders took off their helmet. To reveal a young man with chiselled, classically handsome features and blue hair a few shades darker than Max's. "Admiral Hayes," the man asked obviously seeking confirmation of Lisa's identity. Though it was obvious it was only for forms sake as, from the look in his eyes, he clearly recognised her.

"Yes," Lisa confirmed. "And you are?"

"Oh man not again," one of the other two riders said taking off his helmet to reveal a young man with red hair. "Doesn't anyone know who anyone is tonight?"

"If we're all from different points in the timeline then that's no surprise, Rand," Scott pointed out.

"Which is something that can be easily remedied," Roy commented getting everyone's attention. Prompting a few mildly sheepish looks followed by a short round of introductions and a few brief explanations of who was who.

"Oh man you better watch yourself around Ariel when we get back to the Alpha's and that corvette," Rand said looking at the bioroid that he now knew contained Zor Prime.

"Why?" Scott asked a little confused.

"Come on, Scott your girlfriends an Invid is in fact practically a younger model of the Regis herself," Rand pointed out, "and he's a clone of the guy who pinched the Flower of Life from Optera starting all this trouble in the first place. What do you think is going to happen?"

"Given Ariel's views on how clinging to hatred only breeds more hatred I don't think Zor has anything to worry about, Rand," Scott answered. _Though meeting Zor Prime will probably test her convictions,_ he admitted to himself knowing that the Invid had a near pathological, and understandable, hatred for Zor and the pain he'd caused them ever since he returned to Optera in the company of the Zentraedi and stripped the planet of every last one of the Flowers of Life. An action that had ultimately transformed the Invid from a peaceful, agrarian society into the warlike conquerors that had ravaged dozens of worlds across the galaxy in their quest to recover what was stolen from them.

"Whatever happens we will deal with it," Lisa decided firmly. "Now we should get moving. Rand both you and Rick mentioned fighters and a corvette?"

"Yeah there's two Alpha/Beta combination fighters and one of those attack corvettes the Masters used but in Expeditionary Force colours," Rand confirmed. "It's really weird though as the flight data and performance logs are completely blank. It's literally like they've just come off the production lines."

"Strange," Lisa commented, "hopefully we will soon get some answers about what's going on around here."

"We may have to wait until we get up to the ship for that," Max pointed out "there are bound to be some answers there." Lisa nodded in agreement with the blue-haired veritech ace.

"Which ship is it," Dante asked curious.

"It's the SDF-3," Scott answered, "she's in orbit over the town but there doesn't appear to be anybody aboard her, or at least nobody capable of answering Admiral Hunter's hails." He blinked when he saw Roy smile and shake his head. "What?"

"It's nothing," Roy answered. "It's just weird thinking about it, Rick an admiral." He shook his head even as he wondered just how on Earth that could have come about. Never in a million years would he have expected Rick to give up flying given how he'd been a pilot since he got tall enough for his feet to reach the pedals.

"He's not entirely fond of it," Max admitted getting a slight nod of agreement from Lisa. They were both well aware that Rick would have rather been in the cockpit of a veritech, alternatively flying circles around the bad guys or blasting said bad guys to kingdom come, than sit on the bridge of a starship. It was only his sense of duty and obligation that had made him agree to move up to command.

"Now let's stop stalling," Lisa said. "We should make a move on."

"Everyone should mount up," Scott added slipping his helmet back on and indicating for Rand to do the same.

"Agreed," Lisa replied, "Max you go with Rook, Roy with Rand and I'll go with Commander Bernard."

"Alright Lisa," Roy and Max agreed before jogging off to join their respective rides. Lisa for her part walked over to Scott's and climbed on behind him, feeling the young man stiffen slightly in nerves at who his passenger was.

"Relax commander I don't bite," she said amused. _Well often anyway,_ she thought recalling some of the rows she'd had with Rick when he'd been this guy's age _only if you annoy me._

"Sorry ma'am," Scott answered his cheeks colouring slightly in embarrassment before he made himself calm down "everybody ready?"

"Ready here, Scott," Rand replied a comment echoed half a second later by Rook.

"Alright then," Scott answered starting the engine on the Cyclone and bringing the machine around so they were facing back in the direction they'd come from. Rand and Rook did the same with their own machines and together the three Cyclones began moving, Dante on the Spartas and Zor Prime in his bioroid followed immediately. All of them beginning to make their way through the chaos-strewn streets of Sunnydale to the rendezvous point they'd all detected.

And hopefully some answers as to what was going on.

* * *

 **A Few Minutes Later**

The two Alpha/Beta combined fighters and the single Roil Tiluvo corvette were all humming and pulsing with power as the convoy pulled into the currently deserted building site. Sammie and Rick having busily moved between them bringing their flight systems fully online – or rather in the case of the combined fighters moving between the Alpha's bringing their systems online which had automatically caused the docked Beta's to power up as well – ready for the journey to orbit while he'd been waiting for them. The hum of multiple protoculture-fuelled engines filling the site with a constant rumble, a rumble that seemed to make the very air itself vibrate with contained power.

"Wow," Roy breathed climbing off the back of Rook's Cyclone gazing at the two veritech fighters in awe. He could clearly see the lineage of the VF-1 Valkyrie in these fighters but these were sleeker and more elegant, obviously much more advanced. A slow smile made its way across his face as he couldn't wait to get behind the controls of one of these beauties and see just what it could do. His eyes slowly scanned the closest fighter noticing everything especially how it seemed to be two fighters in one. He could clearly see where the front two fifths of the fighter was joined to the rest. He could also make out multiple missile hatches and felt himself start to drool as he imagined the firepower these things must have.

A gasp came from somewhere off to his right. Jolted out of his contemplation of the fighter he looked in the direction the gasp had come from…

…and froze.

Standing there was Rick. He was dressed in a white and red uniform of the same style as Lisa and Max's though his had a high collared black jacket-like cloak over the top. Like Lisa's his uniform had the rank stars of an admiral albeit a vice admiral. He noticed two things immediately first was Rick had aged quite well in comparison to the last time he'd seen him, despite appearing to be in his early thirties he looked almost the same though his features were slightly sharper with age, the second was the look Rick was giving him – the look like someone who'd seen a ghost.

For a timeless moment they just stood there gazing at one another, the world around them seeming having faded away to nothing leaving just the two of them standing there in space. Then Rick just moved, and suddenly Roy found himself pulled into a desperate hug. And it was then that he truly accepted that in the time Rick, Lisa and Max were from that he was dead. He could feel the desperation and need to confirm that he was really here, that he wasn't a ghost or some other such apparition, in the way Rick was holding him.

He found he couldn't say anything – what did you say, what could you say in this kind of situation – so he did the only thing he could. He just hugged Rick right back. After a few moments he felt Rick begin to pull back. He allowed him to and for a few timeless moments their eyes met, Rick's eyes – shining with unshed tears – communicating without needing words that the two of them needed to talk later. Roy nodded in agreement then watched as a very military mask slid over his brother in everything but blood's face. The senior officer he'd apparently become taking over. He couldn't help but feel a sense of both wonderment and pride at that, he'd known Rick would go far in the RDF, he was a good pilot and an even better squadron leader, but to get that far so young was amazing.

Lisa choose that moment to speak, seeing herself Rick slipping into full military mode so the emotions stirred up by seeing Roy again wouldn't impair his performance during the current mystery they were facing. She couldn't help but be extremely proud of him and how he'd changed from the arrogant, cocky young adult she'd first met into a confident and thoughtful man – though there were times some of the old pilot's attitude showed and Rick still liked to fly a veritech whenever his duties permitted him to. Indeed when going planet side he preferred to take a veritech instead of a shuttle whenever possible. Which had saved his life a few times recently when marauding Invid loyal to the Regent had tried to kill him – only to find out the hard way just why Rick was still considered to be, next to Max and Miriya Sterling, one of the finest combat pilots of his generation.

"Is everyone here now," she asked.

"Not quite, Lisa," Rick replied checking his watch/wrist computer which still showed transponders approaching. There were four of them, all appeared to be walking around the perimeter clearly trying to find a way in. "There are still four transponders broadcasting, their outside I guess they're trying to figure out a way to get in."

"Sir, Ma'am do you want me to go get them," Scott asked.

"If you would, Commander," Lisa replied.

Scott nodded and hopped back onto his Cyclone from where he'd been quietly talking to Ariel, who'd been looking frostily at the bioroid and its hidden operator from the moment she'd first laid eyes on it, preparing her as much as possible for an inevitable face to face encounter with a clone of a man who'd caused her people so much pain. After a brief hug from Ariel he started up his engine and drove away.

While they waited for Scott to return from his errand Lisa turned her attention to the rest of the assembled temporally displaced people. She noticed with approval that Lieutenant Dante and Zor had already began loading their mecha aboard the corvette, its cargo/troop bay was after all fully designed to accommodate mecha. She noticed Sammie gently guiding them and felt her heart twist slightly, she'd really missed the redheaded bridge tech. It had taken her a long time to get used to walking onto the bridge of a battlefortress and not seeing her, Kim or Claudia there. She knew it was the same for Vanessa who'd been assigned to another ship in the Expeditionary Force – like herself and Rick raised in rank, though only to captain.

"Lisa are you alright," Rick asked suddenly from besides her making her jump slightly. She glanced over to see her husband looking at her in concern.

"I'm alright it's just… hard seeing Sammie again after all this time," she admitted gaining a completely understanding nod from Rick.

"I know what you mean," Rick admitted "it was a shock to me as well. And now Roy's here as well, seeing him alive again after all this time I don't know if I should be delighted or heartbroken. I've missed him so much."

"Exactly," Lisa answered a moment before the sound of Scott's Cyclone returning caught their attention. They both looked in the direction of the entrance to see Scott reappear, with four people in tow. One was Dr Lang, looking just like he had the last time she'd spoken to him, another was a serious looking, but at the same time worried looking, Dr Jean Grant. Vanessa Leeds was the third, dressed in the same ensign's uniform she'd worn on the bridge of the SDF-1, but it was the fourth that really made her lungs seize in a gasp as she was confronted with another ghost…

…this one being Ensign Kim Young.

The moment the remaining two members of the SDF-1's infamous Terrible Trio aka The Bridge Bunnies saw her they squealed and came running up babbling questions. Lisa almost, almost, smiled at the near-forgotten habit the bridge bunnies had of speaking like they'd had just a tad too much coffee when they were excited, happy or – as in this case – seriously creeped out by the situation that they'd all found themselves in.

Instead of smiling however she held up a hand for silence, the hyper-active girls quietening immediately in compliance. "I know you have questions girls," she said keeping her voice calm and collected with great effort as part of her just wanted to cry in joy and hug them both. "But unfortunately now is not the time for that. I just need you to get aboard the corvette," she nodded at the repurposed Tirolian corvette – which Scott and co were now loading their Cyclones into – behind and to her right.

"Alright, Lisa," both bridge tech's acknowledged, immediately heading towards the corvette as instructed.

"Ah question who's going to fly the two fighters up," Roy asked, momentarily giving the sleek combined veritech's a hungry look. Lisa couldn't help but chuckle as it was obvious that Roy was itching to get behind the controls and see what they could do.

"Max and I will," Rick said. At the disappointed look his adoptive older brother shot him he explained. "Sorry Roy but the controls of an Alpha fighter are somewhat different to the controls of a Valkyrie, plus there's the weight of the Beta on the back it's quite a bit heavier than the old FAST packs. We'll need to check you out on them before it will be safe for you to pilot one."

Roy scowled but nodded in understanding. "Alright little brother," he replied knowing he couldn't blame Rick for not allowing him to fly an Alpha fighter yet. It would not be safe for him to do so if the controls had any major differences to the extremely complicated at times controls of the Valkyrie veritech's he was familiar with. And safety of the pilot was always a very high priority in both civilian and military aviation.

"Okay now that's settled everyone climb aboard your ride," Lisa ordered. Immediately everyone began moving, Rick and Max towards the open cockpits of the Alpha fighters, and everyone else towards the corvette.

Well almost everyone.

"Aren't you coming, Ariel," Rook asked looking at the Invid princess in confusion as she was still standing where she'd been talking to Scott before he'd gone to retrieve the last of their motley collection of temporally and spatially displaced people.

"Of course I am I just have my own means," Ariel replied as she began to glow with golden light before shifting over entirely to her Invid quasi-energy form. "I will meet you all aboard the ship," she added before turning into a ball of golden light and shooting upwards towards space.

Lisa blinked in surprise. "How'd she…" she started to say.

"Ariel's a stage five human-form Invid ma'am," Scott explained to the befuddled admiral, "in addition she's the daughter of the Regis and crown princess of the Invid. As a result she has a number of extremely advanced abilities including matter-energy conversion and molecular teleportation. Both of whom you've just seen."

"I see," Lisa replied, mentally shaking herself to get rid of the shock while also making a mental note to ask Commander Bernard for more information on Ariel's abilities at a later time. She then turned and began making her way up the ramp into the interior of the corvette and headed straight for the cockpit, to see an unfamiliar purple haired man in ASC uniform sitting at the controls.

"Zor I presume," she said in greeting making the man jump in surprise before turning and smiling at her in greeting.

"Nice to see you face to face at last, Admiral Hayes," he said in perfect English though with the Romanesque accent she'd come to expect from Tirolians. _Huh he looks just like, Rem,_ Lisa thought as if it weren't for a difference in hair colour and muscle tone Zor was identical to Cabell's assistant/student, _is Rem another clone of Zor but made by Cabell instead of the Masters?_ "Correctly I should be called Zor Prime," Zor continued bringing her out of those thoughts for now. "That's what the Masters named me when they made this body but you can just call me Zor."

Lisa nodded in understanding. "Likewise. Are we ready to launch," she asked settling down in the co-pilots seat.

"We are," Zor confirmed.

Lisa smiled back before reaching out and flicking on the radio. "Rick, Max are you two ready to head up to the ship?" she asked.

"Ready when you are, Lisa," Rick said as his face appeared on a comm. screen. A second comm. screen blinked on showing Max.

"Ditto here, Lisa," Max said.

"Alright let's get out of here."

"Roger."

"Roger."

"Take us up, Zor," Lisa instructed.

Zor nodded and with a quick command activated the anti-grav jets on the corvette's underside. Immediately the corvette lifted off and began climbing into the cloudless night sky. Zor kept his eyes focused on the altitude indicator as the corvette ascended higher and higher.

In no time at all they reached two thousand feet. A few quick commands to the control interface brought the nose up, he then slipped the throttle control forward to max power. A momentary surge of G forces instantly pulled them both back against their seats as the corvettes main ion fusion engines roared into life. The corvette shot forward like a spooked rabbit, causing a sonic boom to echo across Sunnydale as its speed quickly passing Mach 1 and continued to both accelerate and climb.

Flanking the corvette in escort positions the two fighters were performing the exact same manoeuvre at the same rate of speed and incredible acceleration as while the fighter's engines were smaller, and had a lot less power, the fighters also had far less mass to push allowing them to easily keep pace with the larger corvette. Maintaining a tight formation all three craft heading towards orbit, the seemingly abandoned SDF-3…

…and unknowing an encounter with a destiny greater than any they had faced before.

* * *

 **Authors Note: Obviously the biggest change in this chapter is the removal of Sera from the narrative, I really wasn't using her that well in the original version of this story and as such she became rather extraneous as a character. Her replacement with Lt Dante and Zor Prime – as well as the addition of characters like Dr Grant and the rest of the SDF-1 bridge bunnies – is going to be quite important later in the story, especially after the spell ends.**


	4. Chapter 4

**Pioneers Dawn: The Rewrite**

 **Disclaimer: I still don't own these characters.**

 **Authors Note: Sorry about the delay with this but I've been kind of busy these last few weeks running back and forth to a static caravan mum and dad bought. Who knew so much work was involved setting one up – lol.**

* * *

 **Chapter Four**

 **Apophis Ha'tak**

 **A Few Minutes Later**

"My lord."

At the sound of his new First Prime's voice, Apophis looked up from his pel'tac throne where he had been quietly entertaining himself with thoughts of the fiery vengeance he would soon inflict upon the homeworld of the loathsome Tau'ri. For their insolence and defiance of those who should be their gods their world would soon be burning. He would smash their cities from space, wipe out their military forces and then descend to claim any survivors as new slaves for his mines and factories. He might even give some of the fittest the honour of becoming hosts to new under lords or get Amaunet to transform them into new Jaffa – which would let him rapidly expanded the size of his armies.

Either way the survivors of this world would serve him. Serve him and help him rise to the very top of the Goa'uld hierarchy, replacing the long dead, and very unlamented, Ra as Supreme System Lord. Apophis had to admit that he found that idea most enjoyable. The very race of humans who'd killed Ra, being the key to his ascension, would be the ultimate in poetic justice.

Thus, he was somewhat irked at his plotting being disturbed. **"Speak,"** he ordered tightly at the trembling Jaffa. Good, the fool had realised he'd irritated his god with the interruption and had better have a good reason for it.

"Forgive me for disturbing you, my lord, but our long range sensors are picking up a large anomalous contact in orbit over the Tau'ri homeworld," the Jaffa – Eu'teh Apophis believed his name to be – reported.

Despite his irritation at the interruption, Apophis was intrigued. **"What kind of contact?"** he asked, raising a perfectly manicured eyebrow to indicate his interest.

"My lord it appears to be a ship," Eu'teh replied. "The vessels configuration does not match anything in our database. Its power signature is also much higher than anything previously recorded from anyone other than the Asgard. The vessel also out masses both Ha'tak by a considerable margin."

" **Hmm,"** Apophis mused, wondering as to what the mystery vessel's identity could be. And given its size, not to mention a power signature high enough to be concerning, if it posed a threat to both his motherships and his plans for the world they were approaching. He thought it over for a few moments before deciding that the time had come to exercise caution.

" **Dispatch a squadron of Alkesh,"** he ordered at last. **"Order them to approach and conduct detailed scans of the unknown vessel. If possible, they are to attempt to board and capture the vessel in the name of their god. If that proves impossible, they are to engage and destroy it. In the meantime, reduce our speed to one quarter thrust. Instruct my son's Ha'tak to do the same."**

"It shall be done, my lord," Eu'teh replied with a deep bow of respect to his liege before turning back to the main console to relay the orders to both the Alkesh launch bays and their companion Ha'tak.

For his part, Apophis leaned back thoughtfully against the backrest of his throne. The appearance of this massive and unknown vessel in orbit of the Tau'ri homeworld was an interesting development. He had to wonder who it belonged to – he doubted the Tau'ri had built it, as while their technology was moderately advanced by human standards, it wasn't anywhere near capable of building interstellar spacecraft, especially spacecraft of any significant size – and how closely they were aligned with the Tau'ri. Had whoever they were learned that he was planning to attack the Tau'ri homeworld and dispatched this ship to ensure he failed?

It was a very real possibility, though if that was indeed the case, then, whoever this mystery race was, they were either very confident, very foolish, or both. After all, there were very few warships this side of an Asgard battlecruiser that could risk challenging even one Goa'uld Ha'tak and surviving the experience, let alone two of them.

After a few more moments' thought, he shrugged mentally. Whoever that ship belonged to and whatever its reasons for being here were, he would know soon enough. If the ship's builders were wise, they would surrender to either his Alkesh or his motherships when they entered weapons range; if not, he'd destroy their vessel and learn who'd dared to attempt to stand in his way from the wreckage, after which he would take great pleasure in conquering said race's homeworld and incorporating any useful technologies they had into his own in the normal fashion for his kind.

 _Maybe there's another way to get some information on the ship,_ he thought recalling a report Klorel had made a short time ago. The shol'vah Teal'c and the Tau'ri called O'Neill who'd so successfully subverted his First Prime had been captured aboard his ship. His first instinct upon seeing them had been to order Teal'c to be relieved of his prim'tah and for O'Neill to be made to watch as the traitorous Jaffa died slowly and painfully as bodily functions supported by the juvenile Goa'uld broke down. But he'd clamped down on that impulse and ordered Klorel to toss them both in a cell so he could deal with them at his leisure.

" **Jaffa,"** he ordered prompting Eu'teh to turn to face him again, bowing in anticipation of his gods next orders. **"Contact my son's Ha'tak. Instruct Klorel that he is to interrogate the shol'vah Teal'c and the Tau'ri O'Neill for any information they have on the vessel over their homeworld. And make it clear that I want that information as soon as possible."**

"It shall be done, my lord."

* * *

 **Stargate Command**

 **A Few Minutes Later**

Major General George Hammond returned with a grim certainty to the SGC's main control room from his office; the Joint Chiefs and the President had been filling him in on the preparations being made to resist the onslaught that the Goa'uld were sure to unleash upon their planet. Military units around the country were beginning to mobilise in preparation for the inevitable ground attack, while squadrons of F-16's for the Air Force and F-18's for the Navy were preparing to move into positions to intercept the glider squadrons that the Goa'uld were sure to send down ahead of whatever they used as troop transports. Mobile and fixed SAM batteries were also being prepped and deployed, ready to engage any gliders that got past the fighters.

On one hand, it was good to see the US military machine swinging smoothly and efficiently into action, ready to counter the imminent threat. But on the other hand, that mobilisation had sown the seeds of a problem. The media had been quick to pick up that something was going on, something big that had kicked over a hornet's nest in military bases around the country, and they were filling the airways with rampant speculation as to what that something was. So far, they were buying that it was a planned readiness exercise, but who knew how long that would last? Already, some of the more suspicious reporters were asking very pointed questions and making life difficult for the Pentagon's press liaison officers. It was only a matter of time before someone broke the story that the mobilisation was not the result of a pre-planned exercise.

As if the media bloodhounds weren't bad enough, the sudden upsurge in military activity had been, perhaps inevitably, noticed by the other nations and was being very sharply and insistently queried at the highest levels. Even staunch allies like the British were demanding to know just what the United States military thought it was playing at. So far, the president had been able to keep a lid on things, but that would last even less time than the cover story with the media would. Already, there had been signs that other national militaries – including the British military as well as the militaries of other NATO members and, unfortunately, the Russians and Chinese – were going to an increasing state of alertness themselves in response to the US military's actions.

Again, the reaction was a two-edged sword. On one hand, if any Goa'uld gliders penetrated the atmosphere over those countries, then the Jaffa could expect to be challenged immediately by fighters from national air forces – not to mention get painted by the targeting systems of those countries own SAM batteries – but on the other, it was sowing the winds for one hell of a political storm later on.

 _If we survive this attack, politically, there is going to be hell to pay,_ he thought, knowing the President and State Department, not to mention the Pentagon, were going to be in for a political hammering even from those who were normally their allies. Especially as there would be no real way to cover up that they'd been attacked from space – especially if other nations military forces ended up shooting holes in Goa'uld fighters, fighters whose very design said 'alien' in big bold letters – and that the sudden upsurge of US military activity had been in readiness to attempt to repel it.

Which would lead to all sorts of questions about how they knew it was coming and who exactly their alien enemy was? Questions that would be extremely hard to answer without revealing the existence of the Stargate Program; which would open another particularly big can of political worms – none of the other nations would be pleased to learn that they'd kept knowledge of the 'gate and, with it, the Goa'uld threat from them.

In short there would be hell to pay.

Shrugging off those thoughts for now - there would be time to think of that if they survived - he focused on the here and now. The control room had become a beehive of activity, with personnel hurriedly coordinating preparations while also preparing to send forces through the gate to properly secure the Alpha Site in preparation for the arrival of the first evacuation parties. Parties that would ensure that even if Earth was destroyed by the Goa'uld, some of their people and culture would survive to one day take the fight back to the megalomaniacal parasites.

"What's our status?" he ordered.

"Sir, SG teams Two, Three, and Four report they are almost ready to go through the 'gate to the Alpha site," Sergeant Harriman reported. "The first of the evacuation parties will reach the mountain in approximately two and a half hours."

"That's not going to give us a lot of time to secure the Alpha site," George mused aloud though he knew they'd manage it, just. "What about the Goa'uld ships? Are they still incoming?"

"Yes, sir, they are. However the latest report from deep space radar indicates that they have substantially reduced their speed, they will now not reach orbit for several more hours. Concurrent with their reduction in speed was the launch of four smaller vessels from one of the ships; the smaller ships are heading our way at very high speed. From their size and speed, they're not gliders; deep space radar believes they're likely to be some kind of scout craft."

George frowned at that, as it was a very smart move on behalf of the Goa'uld, to send out a group of smaller advanced recon units before their main ships arrived over Earth, units that could scan the planet and locate all major defence and communications installations for the capital ships to take out once they arrived. It was kind of like the way they used drones and satellites to recon an area before sending their own forces into combat. _But then the Goa'uld aren't idiots,_ he thought. _Arrogant, yes; lovers of overly melodramatic statements, yes; evil to the core, yes; stupid, not so much. They wouldn't have the empire they do if they didn't have the ability to think and act tactically when they want – and need – to._

"How long until they arrive?" he asked.

"Approximately fifteen minutes, sir; all forces are being put on standby to intercept them if they attempt to enter the atmosphere."

"I see. Now what about the alien ship over California? Has there been any change in its behaviour?"

"Negative, sir. The ship hasn't moved an inch. It's maintaining its orbit over the town of Sunnydale, but we are picking up three contacts, apparently launched from Sunnydale, approaching the vessel. From their size we believe two of them to be fighters, the other is definitely a transport vessel of some kind. At their current speed they will reach the vessel in four minutes."

George frowned, not liking the sound of that, particularly how they'd apparently launched from Sunnydale. Was whoever was on that alien shuttle the reason the ship was here? Had it come to evacuate them before the Goa'uld began their assault on the planet? Had there been an alien foothold on Earth all along? If there had been how could they have possibly not known about it? _Unless some people did know,_ he thought recalling some of the alien conspiracy theories he'd heard over the years.

"Have we still been unable to make contact with them?" he asked, referring to the orbiting ship.

"Yes, sir. We've continued broadcasting on all radio channels, but nobody is answering. It's possible that, whoever they are, they either cannot receive or just cannot understand our transmissions."

 _Or they're deliberately ignoring us,_ George thought, knowing that either scenario was a very real possibility. Unfortunately, the silence of the alien vessel over California presented yet another problem. There were a number of fellow officers in the Pentagon – no doubt encouraged by people like Colonel Maybourne and his NID flunkies – who were of the opinion that the vessel was indeed connected to the incoming Goa'uld ships. Who argued that its appearance was too coincidental to not be linked, and that as such, they should target it with some ICBMs and blast it out of the sky.

So far he – and a few other like-minded senior officers – had been able to convince President Marcel not to order such an action, pointing out that the ship might not be related or have hostile intentions. And reminding everyone – especially the more gung-ho officers – that from that position, the ship, if it had been hostile, could have already decimated not just the most populous and richest state in the union, but the entire west coast from California all the way up to Alaska. It had bought some time, with the president ordering communications attempts to continue. But the longer the vessel remained silent, the weaker their position got. Eventually, the 'blow it out of the sky' camp would win and convince the president to order a nuclear strike upon the California vessel, and there was something telling him that that would not be a very good idea.

"Keep trying to make contact with them," he ordered after a few moments of silent thought and prayer that whoever the aliens were they'd respond to their hails soon.

"Yes, sir."

* * *

 **Klorel's Ha'tak**

 **That Same Time**

Colonel Jonathan 'Jack' O'Neill resisted, just, the impulse to pace around the cell that Klorel's Jaffa had flung him and Teal'c into. He couldn't help but curse to himself as he'd been so convinced he'd be able to reach Skaara, be able to somehow give him the strength to break free of the control of the Goa'uld symbiote inside of him. It had almost worked, but in the end, Klorel had been far too strong; even using a zat blast had only worked for a few seconds while the symbiote fought off the pain and disorientation of the blast.

As a result, he and Teal'c had been hauled before that giant tele-ball thing filling the Stargate and come face-to-face so to speak with Apophis himself. After a bit of a one-sided chat with the lead snakehead, he and Teal'c had been thrown in here to await whatever fate Apophis designed for them. Inwardly, he sighed, wondering why he'd bothered; he should have known that Klorel wouldn't be able to be overwhelmed by his host so easily. He knew the answer; it had been a blind hope, a blind faith that Skaara would be strong enough to overpower the thing controlling him. Now, for the first time, he found himself truly understanding how helpless Daniel must feel knowing that not only was his brother-in-law in the horrible position of being essentially a prisoner in his own body, but his wife as well. Assuming they survived this, he made a mental note to talk to his friend later about it all.

The familiar metallic clanking of Jaffa boots on the deck brought him out of his thoughts, as they seemed to be coming this way. He turned to look at the door. From where he'd been quietly meditating, Teal'c did the same. A moment later, with a grinding sound, the marble-like metal of the door opened, and three Jaffa marched in. Two were wearing the by now all too familiar cobra-like helmets, but the third was wearing just a metallic skull cap – he also had a silver version of the gold-filled tattoo Teal'c had on his forehead.

"Lord Klorel demands your presence in the pel'tac," the silver-mark wearing Jaffa said in an imperious tone of voice as he looked at Jack. "You will come with us now," he also glanced at Teal'c and a brief sneer appeared on his face. "You too, shol'vah."

Jack didn't reply in words. Instead, he merely folded his arms and glared at the trio of Jaffa, defiance practically oozing out of the pores of his skin. He had no intention of letting the Goa'uld inside his friend order him about like he was another one of his slaves, even if it was a few Jaffa giving the orders on Klorel's behalf. The leading Jaffa merely sighed and unclipped his zat'nik'atel from its slot on his gauntlet and opened it to firing position.

"You will come with us voluntarily, or I will knock you out and drag you," he said. "You'll only make it worse on yourself as Lord Klorel will not be forgiving about being made to wait while you regain consciousness."

Jack glared back and started to open his mouth to emit a sarcastic comment about how the overdressed snake controlling his friend could kiss his ass… but before any sound could emerge from his throat, a lance of crackling blue lightning struck one of the Serpent Guards. The Jaffa in question howled in a combination of pain, surprise, and fury as the zat discharge crackled over his armour like some bizarre spontaneous occurrence of St Elmo's fire. A second blast struck the Jaffa, and he crumpled to the ground dead, nervous system completely fried.

The other Serpent Guard and the silver-tattooed Jaffa started to turn to face their attackers, but before they got even halfway around, two more streams of the lightning-like discharges of zat'nik'atel weapons filled their air, striking both, their screams filling the air even as more blasts struck them before they joined their compatriot as lifeless corpses littering the deck.

A second later, Sam and Daniel appeared in the doorway.

Jack grinned. "Nice timing," he said.

"You're welcome, sir," Sam replied as Jack went over to one of the dead Jaffa, squatted down and retrieved the zat gun; it would have to do as a weapon as his own guns had been confiscated by the Jaffa. He had no idea where they were now. "Sir, we've come out of hyperspace," Sam added filling Jack in on what seemed to be going on. "We're in the solar system and are just passing Jupiter; we saw it out one of the view ports."

Jack blinked in surprise. "I thought you said we wouldn't reach Earth for at least a year?!" he exclaimed, more than a little shocked to learn they were in their own solar system already. _Though why come out of hyperspace this far out in the system_ he thought idly. _Unless they want to terrify us with their approach and the inevitability of our destruction at their hands, which I certainly wouldn't put past the snakeheads._

"I think it's obvious by now, sir, that this ship can go a lot faster than ten times the speed of light," Sam replied.

"I have never been aboard a Goa'uld vessel capable of such speeds," Teal'c admitted surprised himself by how quickly they'd reached the Sol system, "though I do recall that the Ha'tak of the false god Ra were reportedly considerably faster than those of the other System Lords. With the collapse of his domain following his death…"

"…a few of the more advanced ships likely fell into Apophis' hands," Sam finished for him. "From there, it probably wouldn't take Apophis long to reverse engineer the more advanced hyperspace technology."

"Oh," Jack replied inwardly wincing as he realised it made sense, too much sense. "Captain, did you place C4 charges where they'll be able to create a dent?" he asked getting back to the mission. They needed to destroy this ship before it reached Earth orbit and started raining energy blasts down on the defenceless planet.

Sam nodded. "We placed charges where they should generate secondary explosions, so yes, sir, it should make one hell of a dent," she replied, then paused, not wanting to spill the bad news that she and Daniel had spotted out the same view port that they'd seen Jupiter through. Unfortunately she knew she had to tell her superior. "But it's not going to help, sir."

"Why not?" Jack asked, then groaned as he realised what she was getting at. "There's more than one ship, isn't there?"

"There's at least one more," Daniel confirmed sounding grim.

"Damn it. Teal'c, if we blow up this ship, will it take out the other one?"

"It would not," Teal'c replied with his normal stoicism. "Apophis's ship – like all Ha'tak – is protected by defence shields; he would therefore still be able to rain destruction on your cities from high above even if this ship is destroyed."

"Oh, for crying out loud! Why didn't you tell us there would be another ship?"

"I was not certain there would be, O'Neill. It is highly unusual for more than one Ha'tak to be dispatched on a mission such as this one," Teal'c explained recalling that few warships save another Ha'tak – or one the near mythical Asgard battlecruisers – could successfully engage and destroy a Goa'uld mothership in a one-on-one confrontation. Thus the Goa'uld generally only sent one Ha'tak on missions like this.

"Great, so we need to somehow take out the other ship as well," Jack mused, his brain struggling to come up with a plan. He could think of only one possible way they could carry out their mission and save the Earth. Unfortunately it was something of a suicide mission.

"If we could find and take the bridge, could we use this ship's weapons to take out the other one?" he asked after a moment.

"Possibly, O'Neill, especially if we were able to get in a good first strike. At the very least, we might be able to cause enough damage that Apophis would withdraw," Teal'c said looking as thoughtful as the big Jaffa ever did. "However, reaching the pel'tac undetected will prove to be extremely difficult. There will be a great many Jaffa between here and there and as we are approaching Earth they will be manning their battle stations."

"We're going to have to chance it," Jack replied as he led them out of the cell and into the corridor. "Which way to the bridge level, Teal'c?"

"The pel'tac is this way, O'Neill," Teal'c answered pointing to the left.

"All right. Let's move it, people."

"Right behind you sir," Sam acknowledged before the reunited members of SG-1 ran back into the labyrinth of corridors that made up the interior of the Goa'uld mothership.

* * *

 **SDF-3**

 **That Same Time**

 _It's eerie,_ Rick thought as he carefully climbed out of the Alpha's cockpit and gazed around at the hanger they'd been automatically drawn into after landing in one of the _Pioneer's_ portside landing bays. Normally, between pilots, flight engineers and armourers the hanger would have been a literal beehive of activity as well as a cacophony of machine and human generated noise.

But not now.

Instead an unnatural silence, like a graveyard at midnight, prevailed. The people who would normally be working here were missing as if they'd never been present at all. The only sounds that could be heard in the cavernous bay were the sounds of everyone's boots on the composite alloy deck and the normal background sounds of the ship itself. He would almost have believed nobody been in this particular hanger at all – expect for the fact that various veritech mecha were all in their maintenance bays, with some even having open access panels and work carts near them.

"Where is everybody," Max wondered his voice sounding especially loud in the bay as he approached. "There should be more than a hundred people working in here at any given time."

"I have no idea," Rick admitted "it's almost like everyone just stopped what they were doing and left."

"But where could they have gone," Roy wondered as the rest of their odd little party gathered around. "Maybe there was some kind of emergency that required them to evacuate?"

"That is unlikely," Ariel said as she appeared in a flash of golden energy. "While I was waiting for you to arrive I surveyed as much of the ship as I could."

"Find anything," Scott asked he was more than a little creped out by how silent the bay was beyond the faint swish of the air vents and the distant, almost inaudible rumbling of the reflex furnaces.

"I found nothing," Ariel admitted as she approached her boyfriend while casting a wary look at Zor, despite knowing that he was a clone and not the man who'd actually stolen the Flowers of Life from her people practically every instinct she had was screaming at her that he was her enemy and not to be trusted. "There is nobody aboard this vessel and I checked all the main areas. I also checked the life pod stations, all pods are accounted for and the launch tubes remain closed and sealed."

"Could the ship be caught in the same space-time distortion as us?" Rook asked. "Maybe there is nobody here because there was nobody aboard the ship in the time it comes from."

"I suppose it is possible but it is most unlikely," Doctor Lang commented, "the _Pioneer_ has never been entirely unmanned, even during the earliest stages of her construction. Even if the ship was from an earlier point in the timeline to some of us our approach would have been detected and a security party dispatched to greet us."

"Maybe we should make our way up to the bridge," Roy suggested, "maybe we'll be able to get some answers from the computers there."

"At very least we'd be able to find out what happened to the crew," Lisa agreed.

"How long will it take to get to the bridge from here, Lisa," Sammie asked.

"On foot at least ten minutes," Lisa answered knowing the layout of her ship well. The bay they were in was three hundred meters forward of, and five decks below, the command citadel. Even using the internal maglev trains and high speed lifts it would take some time for them to reach the bridge from here.

"Is there anywhere closer," Roy asked.

"If I remember correctly there is a secondary control facility on this deck," Dr Lang pointed out, racking his memory of the SDF-3's internal layout.

"There is but it's nearly a kilometre away from us closer to the ships bow," Rick answered, "and even if we did go there our access to the ships database would be very limited. We would be better off going to the bridge."

"Rick's right," Lisa added, "we should head straight up to the bridge. If I remember right the nearest maglev station is just down the hall."

"Maglev," Zor questioned not quite sure what that term meant, despite having spent a lot of time with the 15th Alpha Armoured Tactical Corps he still wasn't completely conversant with Terran technological terminology.

"Trains that run on magnetic levitation principals," Dr Lang explained, "they run through vacuum filled tubes and form a closed loop. There is a maglev set every two decks, it's the only real way to get around a ship this size quickly."

"There is no need to make the journey to the maglev station," Ariel said as she started to glow with the golden light that was, by now, quite familiar to Scott, Rand and Rook. "I can get us to the bridge much faster."

Rick frowned and started to open his mouth to ask what she meant, when the golden light coming off the young woman expanded enveloping all of them. A strange tingling sensation filled him along with a faint hint of tension – as if the matter that made up his body was suddenly being put under some kind of strain – as the hanger bay faded away. For a few moments he saw nothing but the golden light…

…then amazingly a new room began to form around them. The light brightened still further 'till it was almost blinding. Then it vanished and he couldn't help but look around in shock as he saw they weren't in the hanger bay anymore but standing on the expansive bridge of the SDF-3.

"Whoa," Rand said stumbling before looking at Ariel in surprise. "I knew you could do that but experiencing it is just…"

"…wow I know," Scott confirmed with a smile.

"Most impressive young lady," Dr Lang commented. "But do you mind telling me how you get past the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principal? It should preclude any form of viable teleportation." _Much as I wish we could just get around it,_ he thought with a sigh as he would have so liked to have developed a technology akin to Star Trek's transporters. A glance across at Zor Prime told him that the clone was just as intrigued to hear the answer as this was something far beyond the capabilities of the, admittedly very advanced, science and technology of the Tirolians.

Ariel shrugged as she honestly didn't know how she could do what she did. She had absolutely no idea how the vast majority of her powers worked, just that they did. "I'm afraid I do not exactly know how my abilities work," she admitted aloud, "only that they do and how to control them."

 _Hmm something to investigate later then as I'm sure Ariel would really like to learn how her powers work,_ Lang thought a moment before alarms went off from a number of the bridge consoles.

"What's that," Rand asked looking around at the various stations in a mixture of alarm and curiosity. Curiosity because he'd never actually been aboard a functioning starship before, he couldn't help but be surprised by how spacious it was. Alarmed because of that insistent alert coming from a number of consoles.

"A perimeter alert," Scott replied with a frown as he wondered what in Earth orbit could trip a perimeter alert in this time period. He started to move to one of the sensor consoles to investigate the cause of the alert only to stop when he saw Vanessa get there first.

"Lisa sensors have picked up four unknown vessels approaching from out system, they've just past the moon and thus crossed into our weapons range," she reported after a moment of scanning the screens. "Configuration unknown. Whatever they are they're coming straight for us."

"Time to intercept?" Lisa asked.

"Two minutes," Vanessa replied scanning the screens with an expert eye. "They're changing their approach vector slightly I believe they're going to attempt to dock in one of the port landing bays."

Lisa's green eyes narrowed slightly. She did not like the idea that someone she didn't know was about to attempt to board her ship. "Close and seal the landing bays," she said prompting Sammie to move over to one of the operations consoles and give the command.

"Closing and sealing landing bays now, Lisa," she reported watching as indicator lights on the console changed from red, to amber and then finally to green as the SDF-3's landing bays closed and sealed themselves up. She was somewhat surprised to find that despite the console having many more touch screens, and far fewer dials, than the one she was used to she could perfectly understand how it functioned.

"Maybe we should try contacting them," Dante suggested. "For all we know they could have been trying to contact us for a while but haven't been able to get through. There sensors might not be able to penetrate our hull so they could easily assume that were a derelict."

"Possibly," Lisa agreed before looking over at Kim who'd set herself down at one of the communications stations. "Kim do you think you can open a channel to the incoming ships?"

Kim checked her console. "I believe so, Lisa," she replied.

"Do it."

Kim nodded in response and carefully manipulated the controls in front of her to carry out the order. "Channel open, Lisa," she reported a half second before their came a distant thud – like a heavy door being slammed – and a faint but noticeable shiver ran through the deck. A second and third thud, each accompanied by their own slight oscillation in the ships artificial gravity field, followed almost instantly then a forth. Instantly the bridge was filled with noise as klaxons went off, summoning the currently near non-existent crew to battle stations.

"What the hell?" Rand asked as he stumbled, his body pulled momentarily sideways by the fluctuations in gravitational stability.

"We're being fired on," Scott said from where he'd sat down at one of the secondary tactical control stations, both reporting the fact to Lisa and answering Rand's question. His words sparked a sudden flurry of activity as everyone who knew how hurried to man a bridge console so they could respond to this sudden and unprovoked attack.

"Confirmed," Vanessa added, "alien craft are strafing portside landing bay one. They're firing some kind of plasma-based energy charges at the bay doors. Armour is holding."

"All close in weapons coming online, Lisa," Rick said from the main tactical station.

"Activate pin point barriers, set for automatic interception," Lisa ordered taking command of the situation as the ranking officer present. A fresh round of thuds and muted shockwaves rippled through the ship as the alien craft continued their attack. "Return fire."

* * *

The four Alkesh launched earlier from the distant Goa'uld flagship banked and came around for a third bombing run against the unknown alien ships landing bay doors. Their sensors had shown that while incredibly strong the unknown metallic alloy that made up the armoured doors was starting to weaken – it would buckle soon then the Alkesh would be able to land and the Jaffa aboard them disembark to attempt to claim the unknown vessel in the name of the great god Apophis.

Lining up the Alkesh began there next attack run.

And ran into an unexpected wall of energy fire as the SDF-3's portside close in weapons opened up on them, practically filling space with bright blue-white streams of particle laser and the smaller, more numerous bright yellow bolts of pulsed laser fire. The first Alkesh took the blasting full on, its shields flaring briefly before buckling allowing the beams and pulses to savage the ship instantly turning it into a hazy plume of rapidly dissipating, disassociated ions.

The three remaining Alkesh immediately began taking evasive action, even as the ventral plasma turret that was their main anti-ship armament began firing dual pulses at the SDF-3. Powerful pulses of superheated, super dense plasma shooting forth ahead of the Alkesh as they tried to regroup and adapt to counter the sudden deluge of defensive fire.

Their attack proved ineffective as to the Jaffa's shock a softly glowing yellow-green disc appeared right in the path of their plasma assault. The pulses shattered on impact, breaking apart in a blaze of golden sparks that rapidly dissipated in space. But while the Jaffa's attack proved less than successful the same could not be said for the next volley of defensive fire from the _Pioneer's_ lateral weapons.

Two of the three were hit immediately. One taking multiple particle laser beams that ripped right through its shields and hull like they weren't there to slice the craft apart. The second was slightly more fortunate than its companion as while the rapidly jinking Jaffa pilot successfully evaded the particle beams in doing so he ran straight into a vicious pulsed laser barrage.

The Alkesh shields flared, sparked and sagged under the laser assault but held, just, some residual energy crackling through the shield grid to scorch and render the hull. Wounded the Alkesh attempted to veer off, only to run straight into the path of a beam that tore it completely apart.

The remaining Alkesh paused, the Jaffa crew stunned by the fact that in mere seconds two more of their number and with them dozens of brother Jaffa had been annihilated. The hesitation cost them dearly as multiple beams from three separate combination cannon arrays converged on the ship, as before ignoring its shields to cut into then through the whole of the mid-range attack ship's hull. With the predictable result of the ship turning into a fireball as its fatally damaged naquada reactor core let go.

The fireball died within moments leaving the SDF-3 once again alone in orbit above California.

* * *

 **Bridge**

 **SDF-3 Pioneer**

Lisa sighed softly as she observed the destruction of the last of the attacking alien ships. She didn't understand what the alien commander had been thinking in attempting to continue with the attack on their landing bays. There was no way that four small vessels would have anywhere near the firepower needed to inflict serious damage to the _Pioneer_ , like all battlefortress-class vessels the SDF-3's armour had been designed to withstand fire from far more powerful and damaging opponents than those four little vessels. The alien's sensors had to have told them that they were massively outgunned and as such their weapons had little to no chance of damaging let alone breaching the ships thickly armoured hide before they were destroyed.

"So why did they attack us," she mused aloud. "They had to have known that they lacked the power needed to damage let alone destroy us."

"They could be fanatics," Roy pointed out turning his chair to look at her. "We both know, Lisa that fanatics of any sort aren't exactly the most rational or sane beings in creation."

"You may be right," Lisa admitted recalling the actions of various extremist groups on Earth before the Rain of Death. Like many of her generation she'd had a few unfortunate experiences at their hands, especially from the Anti-Unification League after the formation of the United Earth Government.

"Roy probably is," Rick agreed. "But now that that little fracas is taken care of maybe we should get back to finding out what the hell happened to the rest of the crew."

Lisa nodded in agreement with her husband. She started to open her mouth to suggest that they check the ships log, as any major event that would require the crew to somehow leave the ship without using the escape pods would have been automatically recorded there. Before she could speak however their came a deep, rumbling boom as though a million bass drums were being hit all at once and the ship shook violently.

"Report," she ordered as gravitational stability returned.

"Two large alien vessels just exited some sort of spatial distortion directly ahead," Vanessa reported sounding worried. "That jolt was a pair of high powered plasma blasts striking the hull. No damage."

"We're being hailed, Lisa," Kim added. "Audio and visual."

"Show me," Lisa instructed and watched as a projector field activated and a holoscreen coalesced into existence in front of her, showing her the bridge of what was clearly one of the alien ships.

It was a truly bizarre sight.

Standing at three consoles were humans – or at least aliens, who like the Zentraedi and Tirolians before them, appeared to be human – dressed in what looked like chainmail of all things. Each wore a metal skull-cap and two of the three had black tattoos in the shape of a stylized serpent on their foreheads. The third, the one standing at the central console, appeared to have a golden tattoo of the same design on his forehead. Behind him on a raised dais an African male in a golden version of the chainmail sat on an ornate throne. The rest of the bridge had a vaguely tetrahedral look to it with walls of gold encrusted with what looked like old Egyptian hieroglyphs. But most bizarrely of all were the fact that there were a number of braziers around the sides of the bridge making it look more like something that belonged in the tomb or throne room of some ancient king instead of the bridge of an interstellar spacecraft.

" **Unknown vessel,"** the African-looking man said in an odd resonant voice that didn't sound even remotely human, a voice that sent a real shiver down Lisa's spine at the sheer unnaturalness of it. **"I am the great god Apophis. You have just destroyed vessels attempting to carry out my divine will. Surrender your vessel to me now and I shall be merciful."**

Lisa blinked at the sheer arrogance that she could hear resonating in that voice. "Apophis I am Admiral Lisa Hayes commander of the SDF-3 _Pioneer_ ," she replied. "Your vessels fired upon us first we merely defended ourselves."

" **It matters not, Admiral Hayes,"** Apophis answered, **"surrender and I promise I will be merciful. If you do not then you will face my wrath as surely as the world below you will for their own insolence against me."**

Lisa's eyes narrowed and her green eyes sparkled dangerously at the threat to Earth. "I will not allow you to attack Earth," she said in warning.

" **You cannot stop me and I grow tired of this conversation. What is your answer? Do you surrender?"**

"I will not. Nor will I allow you to harm Earth. Leave now and I won't destroy your ships."

Apophis laughed. **"You really think you can stop a god?"** he questioned, looking amused at the very thought that they believed they could harm him. **"Your insolence is amusing… and futile. I offered you a chance to live and you refused so now you will face my wrath. Kree Jaffa."**

Apophis image disappeared from the screen, prompting the hologram to shimmer and change to show a tactical view of the two large tetrahedral ships facing them head on…

…a moment later they fired.

* * *

 **Authors Note: Not many changes needed in this chapter beyond some changes to dialogue to accommodate the new characters and some minor refinements to the combat scene with the Alkesh. I hope people don't mind the inclusion of an internal maglev train system to the ships layout as its always puzzled me how they could possibly hope to get people around the interior of such a massive ship in a timely fashion without something like that being present.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Pioneers Dawn: The Rewrite**

 **Disclaimer: Still don't own these characters – if I did there would have already been a new Robotech series by now instead of just endless rereleases on various media formats – so please continue to keep the lawyers firmly muzzled and on a leash.**

 **Authors Note: Right from this chapter on there should be some major changes from what happened the last time around. While parts of the chapter, especially in the early parts, will remain largely the same as before I do have some major changes planned for the rest of it. Hopefully these changes will prevent me backing myself into the same story telling corner that I did last time – wish me luck.**

* * *

 _ **Chapter Five**_

 **Control Room**

 **Stargate Command, Cheyenne Mountain**

 **A Few Minutes Earlier**

"Sir near orbit radar reports that the small craft launched from one of the Goa'uld ships are entering orbit."

At the sound of Walter Harriman's voice George Hammond immediately turned from where he had been discussing the order for transferring medical staff and essential medical equipment to the Alpha Site with Doctor Fraiser. "Do we have any idea what they're doing," he asked coming up to stand behind the slightly younger man.

"Yes sir we do. They appear to be making a beeline straight for the alien vessel over California," Walter reported, "it could that its exact identity, and its reason for being here, is as unknown to the Goa'uld as it is to us."

 _That's possible and if that is indeed the case it's perfectly logical for Apophis to send out scouts to investigate it before committing his main ships,_ George thought as he glanced up at one of the overhead screens which was showing a near orbit radar image, an image that was now centred on the large yellow chevron that identified the alien vessel still holding position in orbit. Four small red triangles representing the Goa'uld ships could clearly be seen approaching it. After a few moments they began repeatedly buzzing it in what looked to him like an attack run and not just an attack run, a bombing run.

"Sir the Goa'uld craft are firing upon the vessel over California," Walter confirmed a moment later, listening to the report from near orbit radar on his headset. Then another report came in, this time from NASA. "Sir NASA reports that they have finished repositioning one of our spy satellites. We now have a video feed of the California vessel."

"At last," George muttered. He was well aware that over the last few decades – especially during the height of the Cold War – the United States had launched a sizeable number of spy and surveillance satellites into orbit. Unfortunately with the war over most were no longer maintained and had long since quit working as the harsh and completely unforgiving environment of space took its toll on delicate electronics. Since the vessel over California had been detected NASA had been attempting to redirect one of the few that remained operational onto it, a tricky operation if ever there was one considering the number of satellites in orbit was now higher than ever before. "Put it up on the monitors," he ordered.

Almost instantly the screen changed from displaying orbital radar telemetry to a grainy video image of the absolutely immense alien vessel that had appeared without warning in the sky over the most populous state in the union. It was immediately extremely eye catching with its combination of blocky angular lines and strange almost organic looking curves and projections. What was even more striking about it was the colour of the hull which was a pale shade of red and appeared to be very thickly armoured. All in all it was strange and very alien yet at the same time there was something almost human in the design – especially the blocky nature. It was also obviously a warship as he could make out dozens of very large turrets with multiple cannons of some kind lining the hull and many smaller ones alongside closed hatches that reminded him somewhat of missile silos.

It was also under attack.

The four Goa'uld vessels, squat pyramidal things that looked somewhat like they'd been normal Egyptian-style pyramids that had been sat on by something, were buzzing the ship again and again. With each pass each craft dropped three or four glowing yellow balls of energy from their undersides – all aiming at the exact same point on the bigger ship's hull. Whatever weapons the Goa'uld were firing they didn't appear to be having any effect upon the vessel, well beyond create pretty explosions against the hull – a hull that didn't seem to be even bothered by the assault.

After a few more moments of fruitless bombardment the alien crew – apparently believing that they'd proved their point that the Goa'uld craft couldn't hurt them – returned fire. Multiple streams of bright yellow energy pulses and blue-white energy beams shooting out of numerous places along the ships port flank – every blast coming from one of the smaller turrets. In what seemed like seconds the sudden barrage of defensive fire tore all four Goa'uld craft from the sky, beams and bolts ripping through them like they were paper to simply tear them apart.

"Bloody hell."

George wasn't sure who it was in the control room who said that but he had to nod in agreement. That barrage had been enormous and incredibly effective and, somewhat frighteningly, had come only from a relatively small faction of the tiered ranks of turrets lining the giant warships hull. He was suddenly extremely glad that he, and his like-minded colleagues, had been able to keep the more gung-ho generals and admirals at the Pentagon from convincing President Marcel to order a nuclear strike against the vessel. Whoever she belonged to the alien vessel had a truly frightening level of defensive firepower, and probably even more offensive power, with a close in weapons grid that would have made short work of any missiles they'd launched against her. In fact he doubted any missile would have gotten close unless the ship's crew allowed it to before shooting it down.

A sudden flash of light on the image brought him out of his thoughts. He looked back at the screen in time to see what looked almost like a bruise form in space a few thousand kilometres out from the bow of the unknown vessel. The anomaly pulsed and two large black and gold tetrahedral-shaped ships emerged, each firing a single pulse of bright golden plasma at the California vessel. The blasts didn't seem to do anything upon impacting the hull, they simply disappeared in a bright flash of diffusion that rapidly faded into nothing leaving the ship completely unharmed.

 _The Goa'uld must have made a precision hyperspace jump to orbit after their scouts were destroyed,_ he thought, _the manner and speed of their destruction probably clearly communicated the threat of that ship to Apophis. Prompting this response._ He made a mental note to include in any report he might get to write on this whole incident the fact that Goa'uld warships were apparently capable of such precision jumps as the more they knew about the actual capabilities of Goa'uld capital ships the better – currently they knew next to nothing about them beyond what little Teal'c had been able to tell them.

For what seemed like an eternity nothing seemed to happen, all three alien warships seeming to be having the space based version of the classic Mexican standoff. Then with a breath-taking suddenness the stalemate ended as both Goa'uld ships opened fire again. Bright golden bolts of superheated plasmatic energy shooting forth from their cannon arrays towards the bigger ship. Immediately yellowish-green glowing discs of energy appeared in the path of the incoming bolts, bolts which upon impact with each disc immediately shattered – breaking apart in a blaze of golden sparklers. Clearly the discs were some kind of defence shield being generated by the vessel, one that seemed to be oddly familiar from somewhere but he couldn't for the life of him remember where he'd seen a defence shield system like that before.

He heard a surprised gasp behind him. "That's impossible, how can that be real," Doctor Fraiser said aloud gaping at the screen.

"Doctor," he asked turning to look at the short, brown haired doctor who, despite her small size, could intimidate even the biggest, most battle hardened marines into obeying her. A doctor who right now had an utterly gobsmacked look on her face as she stared at the screen in disbelief. "You recognise that ship?"

"Not the ship sir but I do recognise that defence," Janet Fraiser answered. "They're pinpoint barriers, mobile energy discs that stop incoming weapons fire be it beam, pulse or missile. They can also be focused to punch through just about anything. They're fictional sir, from an 80's Japanese anime show called Robotech."

"I didn't know you were a fan of Japanese animation, Doctor?" George commented with a raised eyebrow.

"I'm not sir but Cassie watched a few episodes of the show when she was visiting a friend a few weeks ago," Janet explained, despite the situation she had to smile at the thought of her adopted daughter. Cassandra had come a long way from the traumatised girl from Hanka who'd been used as a human Trojan horse by the Goa'uld Nirrti – and in such a short span of time. But then children were often far more resilient than adults generally gave them credit for.

"She got hooked on it and I've had to buy her the entire series of tape," she continued "they're seen in numerous episodes in the first season known as the Macross Saga."

"Is there any possibility that this is a coincidence?" George asked wondering if this was a bit like that movie Galaxy Quest where aliens had created a ship, and a technology, based upon intercepted television signals.

The doctor shrugged. "Possibly sir though I doubt it. Those barriers," she gestured to the screen which showed another volley of Goa'uld plasma fire being effortlessly intercepted and stopped by the pinpoint barriers, "look and behave identical to the ones generated by the main ship in the Macross Saga the SDF-1. Though if whoever these aliens are have been here for a while, that they could be behind the creation of Robotech or rather the three original anime shows Harmony Gold edited together to create Robotech. Maybe a fictional, animated recreation of something from their own history."

George frowned thoughtfully. It was certainly a very plausible explanation, though it did indicate that Earth had had contact with aliens – and that someone had been hiding it for whatever reason and hadn't thought his command needed to know or hadn't even known about the Stargate – for far longer than the Stargate had been open. It certainly made much more sense than a Galaxy Quest style explanation. Additional flashes of light on the screen brought him out of his thoughts, there would be time to mull on the possibilities later, and brought his full attention back to the monitor.

In time to see that the alien vessel had apparently tired of just intercepting the Goa'uld weapons fire for as he watched its own guns opened fire. Dozens of bright blue beams, which from the look of them had a bore of at least a meter across each, shooting out from some of the larger cannon turrets lining the hull. Simultaneously many of the smaller turrets also opened up, pounding out the same blue-white beams that had earlier sliced the Goa'uld scouts apart with such contemptuous ease only this time the beams were far more numerous.

Each Goa'uld ship took a dozen beams each, quasi-crystalline appearing energy barriers flaring visibly into existence around them stopping the beams from cutting into the cold metal hulls. Despite the flaring of the shields the satellites video cameras clearly showed both ships seeming to visibly tremble with the impacts. The beams vanished though the shielding continued to glow, the glow was only just starting to fade when more beams lashed the shields of both vessels again putting more strain on the Goa'uld defences.

A third massive volley followed even as the second faded, causing the flare of the Goa'uld shields to get ever brighter and causing lightning like forks of energy to arc between the shield and the hull of the ship beneath. Each arc triggering a small explosion where it touched the hull. _The Goa'uld shields must be failing,_ George realised with a jolt of shock, _whatever those beams are they're too powerful and numerous for the Goa'uld defences to withstand._

"Sir near orbit radar reports that the Goa'uld ships are falling back," Walter reported breaking the awed silence that had fallen upon the control room. He paused as he listened to another report from the radar operators. "They're launching fighters."

George nodded. He could see it himself, the batwing form of the Goa'uld Udajeet fighters – or Death Gliders as they called them – starting to launch from the base of the pyramid on one of the two Goa'uld capital ships. Simultaneously more of the larger scout craft seemed to be emerging from bays further up the pyramid. _Why is only the one ship launching,_ he thought confused a moment before a violent explosion abruptly blossomed from the hanger bay on the other ship; the blast visibly making the ship jerk back with the imparted momentum.

"What the hell caused that," he muttered aloud as the explosion faded. The other ship was still intact but it now appeared to be drifting, trailing a thick plume of debris from a huge breach in the hull where the hanger bay had been, many of the lights coming out its numerous windows flickering and dying as the vessel appeared to be losing power. Clearly that blast in the hanger bays had inflicted massive damage to the ship. After a seconds thought he began to laugh as he realised what the explosion meant.

SG-1 were alive and aboard that ship.

"Sir," Walter questioned wondering why his superior officer had suddenly started doing an impression of a laughing hyena.

"It's SG-1," George replied, "they're alive and they're aboard that ship. They must have planted explosive charges in the hanger bay. When the Goa'uld went to launch they set them off."

"But SG-1 only took a few pounds of C4 explosive with them," Walter pointed out, "it shouldn't have caused a blast that big."

"Not normally no," George agreed. "But remember Walter, Colonel O'Neill is trained in demolitions between him, Captain Carter and Teal'c they'd likely know just where to place the charges to cause the most amount of damage."

Walter nodded in understanding. However before he could reply a report on his headset made him go white. "Sir near orbit radar reports half the Goa'uld fighters and all but three of the scouts are heading for the California vessel," he reported, "the others are heading for the atmosphere. Projections are they'll enter the atmosphere within two minutes."

"Where are they going," George demanded.

"If they stay on their current vector they'll be over Los Angeles inside of three minutes," Walter reported sounding and looking grim, knowing his words signalled that an avalanche of pain and death was about to descend upon the second largest city in the United States. While air force and marine air corps fighters would be quick to respond, not to mention the fighters from the USS _Theodore Roosevelt_ carrier battlegroup patrolling off California, there was nothing they could do to intercept the Goa'uld before they were over the city. "The Pentagon has been alerted and all forces in the region are beginning to respond but sir we're not going to be able to intercept them before they reach the city."

"Jesus," George breathed in horror at the very thought of the destruction the Goa'uld were surely about to visit upon the City of Angels. "Keep me informed, Walter."

"Yes sir," Walter acknowledged as a brilliant series of explosions on the monitors caught everyone's attention.

Looking up George saw all the Goa'uld fighters that had been aiming for the vessel orbiting above California die, vanishing in a series of brilliant explosions as what appeared to be a massive missile salvo tore them from the sky. The scouts came through the firestorm, their shields glowing fiercely, that had enveloped the fighters and continued to press on towards their target. But only for a moment as a hail of blue and blue-white beams shot towards them from the vessel, burning every last one of them out of space.

"Sir, radar reports that the California vessel is moving," Walter reported.

George nodded he could see it himself. The immense red vessel was moving, swinging around onto a vector that would take it out of orbit. After a second or two what looked like small stars burst into existence at its back as its main drives came to life and began propelling the vessel out of orbit… on a vector that clearly communicated its crew's intention to intercept – and presumably reengage – the remaining operational Goa'uld ship.

 _I'm not sure who the hell you are but give that bastard Apophis hell for us please,_ he thought at the ship as blue beams once again shot out from its turrets to slam into the weakened shields surrounding the remaining Goa'uld ship. The Goa'uld fired back immediately as once again battle was joined.

It was a short affair as the one ship was now the focus of every beam cannon aboard the mysterious alien warship. The effect was devastating as beams tore into the shields surround the Goa'uld warship. The shield flared like a nova as the beams assaulted it before, in a blaze of pyrotechnics that would make any fireworks technician proud, vanishing leaving the hull wide open for the next salvo of blasts.

It came soon enough. Several beams tearing into, then through, the thick metal hull of the warship to come shooting out the far side of the ship. For half a second nothing more seemed to happen then, as the beams vanished, the Goa'uld warship literally seemed to start crumbling in upon itself. Hull section after hull section collapsing inwards, sending debris and great tongues of burning plasma flying into space. After a few seconds of this a bright light seemed to shine from somewhere deep within the vessel…

…then with a breath taking suddenness it exploded with indescribable violence. A rippling ring of some kind of energy shot out from the micro-nova that seconds earlier had been the Goa'uld warship. It washed over the other ship, triggering a number of quite sizeable explosions all over its hull even as it sent it spinning away out of control.

The battle, at least the orbital part of it, was over.

* * *

 **Klorel's Ha'tak**

 **A Few Minutes Earlier**

Jack cursed and ducked behind a wall buttress as a golden glowing glob of superheated plasma impacted the bulkhead right where his head was a moment ago. The impact showering him with hot sparks that made him hiss slightly in pain. Not giving the Jaffa who'd just shot at him another chance he leaned out of cover and fired his commandeered zat gun at the offending alien, twice. The Jaffa screamed and dropped to the deck dead as the energy surge fatally disrupted his nervous system.

Jack ducked back behind the buttress as plasma bolts from the dead Jaffa's friends shot right where he'd been – intent on disembowelling him in retaliation for the death. Automatic gunfire from Sam and Daniel answered them, followed by a stream of zat fire from Teal'c forcing the Jaffa to duck for cover themselves to avoid getting shot dead. Not that all of them made it as two of the remaining four Jaffa in the patrol dropped dead, one with the lightning-like discharge of a zat'nik'atel dancing over his body the other riddled with bullet holes.

 _This could be going better,_ Jack mused to himself as he leaned slightly out of cover to fire a few supressing shots at the last two Jaffa. Teal'c had been, unfortunately, correct when he'd said that there would be a lot of Jaffa between them and the ships bridge. This was the third enemy patrol that they'd encountered since leaving the holding cells and the second in just under five minutes. Each time they'd been forced to fight their way past and that was costing them time. Not to mention Daniel and Sam were starting to run a bit low on ammo.

And he knew it was probably only going to get worse the closer they got to the bridge. Like all Goa'uld while he was arrogant and a megalomaniac Klorel wasn't stupid, plus he'd have some knowledge of their combat tactics and way of thinking from Skaara's memories of the desperate battle against Ra. As such he would be well aware that they were certainly aiming to take the command centre and would be directing as many Jaffa as he could to intercept them.

The sound of two staff blasts in rapid succession from down the corridor caught along with the thuds of armour-clad bodies hitting the deck, caught Jack's attention. Cautious he peered around the buttress, to see both Jaffa that had been firing at them sprawled on the floor dead, holes the size of small dinner plates blown in their bodies. Standing over the slightly smouldering bodies were three Jaffa, two of them were young looking and unfamiliar. But the third he recognised immediately as being Bra'tac, the old but still strong and capable Jaffa Master who'd aided them on their second visit to Chulak.

"Bra'tac," he said stepping out of cover.

"Greetings Colonel O'Neill," Bra'tac replied giving the human officer an interested look. He had been surprised to find out that SG-1 had somehow gotten aboard this ship before they'd left the small outpost Apophis had been using as a staging area for this campaign against the Tau'ri. How they managed it he wasn't entirely sure, though he guessed the Stargate being carried deep within the ship had something to do with it. Somehow they'd learned of the co-ordinates of the outpost and come here not realise they were actually coming aboard a spacecraft instead of a planetary surface. He guessed that they'd been doing reconnaissance of the forces involved, just like how the Goa'uld would periodically sent out single or small groups of Jaffa to investigate new worlds before arriving themselves. It was the only logical explanation as they could have really believed a single four man team – even if one of them was a Jaffa – would be sufficient to stop the attack.

"Tek'ma'te Master Bra'tac," Teal'c said approaching before the big rebel Jaffa and the elder Jaffa who'd taught him all he knew as well as opening his then young mind to the truth of the Goa'uld grasped forearms in a traditional, and very Roman-like, greeting.

"Teal'c, it is good to see you again old friend," Bra'tac acknowledged with a smile. Before nodding politely at the other two members of SG-1. "Doctor Jackson, Captain Carter it is agreeable to see you all again. I assume you are here to do something to prevent the imminent attack upon your world?"

"You could say that yeah," Jack replied. "Thanks for the save by the way."

"You are most welcome. I did have my own plans in place to avert the attack on your planet however I fear they will no longer work given what the long range sensors have revealed about your planet."

"Which is?" Jack queried.

"A large starship of unknown origin has been detected orbiting your planet," Bra'tac explained, "Apophis has dispatched a squadron of Al'kesh to investigate it before moving the fleet into attack position. I assume the vessel belongs to your people."

Jack frowned. "Ah no we don't have starships," he replied already wondering just who this starship could belong to, and what was it doing here. "Ah what are Al'kesh?"

"Goa'uld midrange bombers," Teal'c explained. "They are both considerably faster and more heavily armed than death gliders with considerably more range being capable of limited interstellar travel. They are typically employed both as scouts like the MALP devices sent through the Stargates and as ground attack craft in support of Jaffa columns."

Jack's frown deepened and he started to open his mouth to ask why they'd never encountered them before now. But before he could there was a whirring whining sound from deep within the bowls of the ship a moment before everything lurched forward with such force that he was thrown to the deck. Only to be physically picked back up and knocked onto his back as the ship lurched again, backwards this time. Yelps around him let him know that everyone else was getting the same treatment. The whine disappeared and he groaned before awkward sitting up, wincing as bruised back muscles protested the movement most strongly.

"What the hell was that," he asked.

"We appear to have just executed a short range hyperspace jump," Teal'c answered. "I assume we've just jumped from our location near the fifth planet of the system to Earth orbit."

"Why would the Goa'uld do that," Daniel asked groaning as he picked himself up, inwardly hoping no Jaffa came along now as they were all sitting ducks while they got their wits back.

"They would do so, Doctor Jackson, if the Al'kesh dispatched by Apophis had been destroyed by the unknown vessel," Bra'tac replied "Al'kesh are well shielded for their size so their quick destruction would mark the unknown as a threat to be eliminated as soon as possible."

"Hmm that could work for us," Jack mused as he got his feet back under him. "If the Goa'uld are about to engage whoever it is in orbit in battle will distract the crew. We should encounter less resistance as we attempt to take the bridge."

"The bridge," Bra'tac queried uncertain what O'Neill meant using that term in this context.

"He speaks of the pel'tac," Teal'c explained.

"I see," Bra'tac asked. "What is your plan?"

"Take the bridge," Jack replied, "we've already planted explosive charges in strategic locations throughout the ship – when detonated they'll destroy this ship."

"But the blast won't destroy Apophis's ship due to the shields surrounding it," Bra'tac realised. "So you want to take the pel'tac and turn this ships weapons upon Apophis." Jack nodded. "A viable strategy, O'Neill and very similar to what I originally planned to avert the attack and you are right the crew will shortly be distracted by combat."

No sooner than those words left Bra'tacs mouth than a deep, rumbling boom like thunder crashing directly overhead, echoed through the ship and the deck rocked under them coming within a hairs breath of pitching them all to the floor again. "We appear to have engaged in battle," Teal'c commented as gravitational stability returned. But only for a moment as the ship shook again mere seconds later.

"Then we have little time left to execute your strategy," Bra'tac added knowing from the way the ship was being shaken that whatever weapons fire was hitting them it was powerful. Powerful enough to put the shields under considerable strain. "Come we must hurry."

"Lead on then," Jack said a microsecond before the ship rocked for the third time, the shaking being so severe this time that he actually stumbled in the sudden loss of gravitational stability.

"The shields must be under incredible strain," Teal'c commented knowing from decades of experience that a Ha'tak didn't generally shake with such force unless its shields were under heavy strain and getting close to the point of failure. "O'Neill whoever it is who has come to your planets aid must be extremely powerful in order to damage the shields so badly so quickly," he added knowing there were few races indeed who possessed the power to damage the shielding of a Goa'uld mothership so quickly.

"Could it be Thor's race?" Daniel queried as a faint whirr came from somewhere deep inside the ship.

"That's the sublight drive the ship must be retreating from whoever's damaged the shields," Teal'c realised and explained aloud. "And I doubt very much that is the case Daniel Jackson. Asgard battlecruisers have a very distinctive appearance, had our opponents been Asgard we would have already retreated from the system at best or at worst would have long since been destroyed."

"These Asgard are that powerful," Jack asked, from their experience with Thor's Hammer and the labyrinth on Cimmeria he knew that the Asgard would likely be a very powerful race given they had the unprecedented ability to destroy a Goa'uld within a host without harming said host. It was also obvious, from the repository that had existed on Ernest's planet, that they were an old race – a very old race. But somehow he hadn't believed they would be so strong that the Goa'uld would far rather run with metaphorical tails firmly tucked between their legs than risk a fight with them.

"Indeed, O'Neill. The Asgard are by far the most powerful and dangerous race ever encountered by the Goa'uld. They are greatly respected and greatly feared by the System Lords."

Jack frowned and started to open his mouth to ask why they'd not seen these Asgard around more often, if they were so powerful. But before any sound could emerge the ships artificial gravity field went completely berserk. Jack yelped as he was physically slammed hard against the deck, before being catapulted against a bulkhead as the ship bucked and shook. Cries of pain and surprise came from everybody's mouths as they were thrown around like marbles in a washing machine and underlining it all was the deep, concussive rumbling of what had to be one hell of an internal explosion.

He slid to the floor as, after what seemed like an eternity but in reality was probably only a few seconds, gravitational stability returned. "Ugh, what the hell was that," he groaned as he sat up feeling every last one of his forty-odd years as he did so. He immediately noticed that the corridor was a lot dimmer than it had been a moment ago, many of the indirect overhead lights were off with the only real illumination coming from the oil fuelled braziers the Goa'uld loved so much.

"I believe it was an explosion deep within the hull, O'Neill," Teal'c replied as he picked himself up. "It appears that the ship has lost primary power as a result. However I do not know what caused the blast."

"I believe I do," Sam broke in as she picked herself up, noting out the corner of her eye Bra'tac helping Daniel to get his feet back under him while one of the other two Jaffa retrieved Daniel's glasses from where they'd flown off during the blast.

"Well don't keep it to yourself, Carter," Jack prompted.

"One of the places where me and Daniel planted C4 charges was the main glider bay," Sam explained, "I set the secondary trigger to blow if it detected strong vibration like it was being tampered with or if the gliders started to move down their launch rails. Klorel must have gone to launch fighters which set off the charges, the gliders fuel cells if they're naquada based would have amplified the explosions enough to cause a blast like the one we just felt.

"The blast must have ruptured some of the ships primary power conduits," she continued. "That would explain why primary power appears to be down at least in this part of the ship. I do not know if the rest of the ship is without mains power."

"There is a computer terminal in the next compartment," Bra'tac informed them, "we will be able to get a report on the ships status from there. Though I regret to inform you O'Neill, if primary power is down all weapons systems and shields will be off line along with propulsion. Your plan to destroy or drive off Apophis' ship will no longer work."

"We'll cross the bridge when we come to it," Jack answered, mind already racing as he struggled to come up with another plan to stop Apophis. "Would you please take us to this computer terminal, Bra'tac?"

"Certainly," Bra'tac replied a moment before the overhead speakers crackled to life.

"Kree Jaffa. Chel'tek na krell de mun. De'lak shell, kree mak Jaffa," a synthetic sounding version of Apophis voice said.

"Ugh oh," Daniel said aloud.

"What? What did he say?" Jack asked.

"Attention all Jaffa the self-destruct sequence has been initiated. All Jaffa to evacuate immediately," Daniel translated.

"Shit. Teal'c how long before the ship blows?" Jack asked.

"There is a five minute count down, O'Neill," Teal'c replied promptly.

"Is there any chance of disarming it?"

"No the only way to abort the self-destruct sequence is with a command override," Bra'tac explained, "only Apophis and Klorel will have the correct command codes to do that. Klorel will already be making his escape."

"Oh. Okay we need to get off this ship then, I don't know about the rest of you but I don't fancy getting blown up," Jack stated, disappointed that they wouldn't be able to deactivate the ships self-destruct sequence. Having a Goa'uld mothership to pull apart and reverse engineer would have gone a very long way towards protecting Earth from attack, well assuming they stopped the attack already in progress. "What's the best way to get off the ship? Go back to the Stargate?"

"No most of the crew will be making either for the chappa'ai or one of the secondary hanger bays," Bra'tac replied, "the best way to leave the ship without having to fight through an entire legion of Jaffa would be to use some of the escape pods. There is a bank of them on this level. Teal'c can lead you to them, since they do not know about us it would be better for myself and my two companions to join the rest of the crew during the evacuation."

Jack nodded in agreement. The longer Bra'tac, and his true feelings and sympathies about the Goa'uld being false gods, went undetected the better off they would be. "Good idea," he answered. "Good luck."

"To us all, O'Neill," Bra'tac replied with a polite half nod which Jack returned. He then turned to Teal'c. "Until next time old friend."

"Take care, Master Bra'tac," Teal'c answered before grasping his old mentor's forearm in the traditional Jaffa gesture of greeting and parting. The two former First Primes of Apophis nodded politely to one another before releasing each other. Bra'tac then deployed his Serpent Guard helmet from the neck peace of his armour before turning and walking away, the two Jaffa who'd accompanied him following quickly behind their master but not before exchanging their own polite nods of respect with Teal'c.

In moments all three were out of sight, vanishing off to the right where the vaguely hexagonal corridor came to a T-junction. Teal'c then turned to look back at his team mates and especially at the man who'd finally set him free from Apophis and in doing so earned his undying respect and loyalty.

"The escape pods are this way, O'Neill," the big Jaffa said a moment before the deck briefly shook violently under their feet.

"What was that," Daniel wondered aloud. "That definitely wasn't weapons fire."

"I don't know but whatever it was it means were running out of time," Jack answered. "Take us to those escape pods, Teal'c."

"They are this way, O'Neill," Teal'c said repeating himself before starting to walk away. The three human members of SG-1 hurrying to keep up with the Jaffa, all of them hoping they would reach the pods and get off the ship in the time they had left before the self-destruct fired.

* * *

It didn't take the four of them long to reach the bank of escape pods that Bra'tac had suggested that they use to leave the ship before it exploded. Arriving in the room Jack blinked in surprise at what he saw as when Bra'tac had mentioned escape pods he'd assumed they'd be like something out of Star Trek, Star Wars or Babylon Five. Basically a pod-like small spacecraft that would sustain their lives in space until they could be rescued – presumably by a space shuttle or by the alien vessel that had apparently come to engage the Goa'uld and save their planet.

But these were nothing like that.

Instead of a pod that could house a few people each escape capsule was more like the traditional sarcophagus that many an Egyptian mummy had been found in. They stood vertically and each of the five capsules that he could see looked like it would only hold a single person, and even then it would be quite claustrophobic.

"Okay I know the Goa'uld have this whole Egyptian motif thing going but this is taking things a bit too far," he commented scowling at the pods. "Teal'c are you sure these things are safe? And they look awful claustrophobic."

"The escape pods will be perfectly safe, O'Neill," Teal'c replied as he walked up to a control panel on the wall and tapped a few controls causing each of the five pods to open with a soft whirr, "and you need not worry about feeling trapped as once launched the pods will put us all to sleep until we land."

"You mean they'll put us into stasis," Sam questioned.

"That is correct."

"Okay so where will we land in these things?" Jack asked.

"The navigation system in the pod will automatically target the closest habitable planet, O'Neill," Teal'c replied. "Given what this ships current location is likely to be they should bring us down somewhere in North America."

Jack scowled and was about to ask Teal'c if he could be a bit more specific than that. North America was pretty damned vast and large parts of it, especially in Canada, were still very much wilderness even after centuries of settlement – or a few millennia of settlement depending on who you were talking to – and modern urbanisation. It would be awful if they say came down in the middle of nowhere, though they did have radios so they could possibly signal the nearest US military base for assistance. However before he could make any sound the synthetic version of Apophis' voice spoke again.

"Kree'tak sherr ha'rak," it said. Jack looked pointedly at Daniel for the translation while wondering not for the first time why the mysterious translation system that meant everyone across the galaxy sounded like they were talking English often had such problems translating Goa'uld.

"We're being advised that the self-destruct system will fire in two minutes," Daniel told him, "Jack we need to go now."

"Alright. Everyone in a pod," Jack ordered.

One by one the four members of SG-1 climbed into one of the sarcophagus-like escape pods. With Jack being the last one to climb in. No sooner than he climbed in than the pod closed up leaving him seemingly trapped in an all-encompassing black cocoon. A cocoon that uncomfortably reminded him of sensory deprivation training, which had been the one part of his special ops training that he loathed and despised to this day. _Okay Jack don't panic,_ he told himself as he was uncomfortably aware of how little space – and likely how little air – there was in here.

A sudden jolt shook the pod and then there was the awful feeling of falling. He guessed that the pod he was in was travelling down some kind of launch shoot though that knowledge did nothing to stop the distress calls his inner ear was sending to his brain. After what seemed like eternity, but was really only a few seconds at the most, the sensation of falling vanished. Instead he began floating as the pod left the influence of the Goa'uld ships artificial gravity field making him now completely weightless.

For another few timeless moments nothing happened. Then the walls of the pod began glowing with a soft white light that was almost identical to the light emitted by the inner panels of the other type of sarcophagus used by the Goa'uld – the kind that could heal practically any injury and even reverse death itself. A drowsy sensation began to fill him and, remembering what Teal'c had said about the pods putting their occupants into a kind of stasis till they landed, he didn't attempt to fight it. Instead he allowed his eyes to drift closed and in seconds he was in a full stasis sleep, completely unaware of anything as the pod began a long, slow flight to Earth.

* * *

 **Bridge**

 **SDF-3 Pioneer**

 **That Same Time**

"Sensors indicate multiple craft leaving the remaining enemy ship, Lisa," Vanessa reported her eyes focused on the sensor display. "They appear to be evacuating it. The craft are not advancing towards us or the planet but instead appear to be heading out into deep space."

"We should pursue and destroy them," Zor said calmly, all the military training and instincts he'd been put through to be the Robotech Masters chief warlord – as he had been before they'd made him first a spy then downloaded all his progenitors memories into his own – telling him that was the correct course of action to take. Though he suspected that the Terrans around him wouldn't exactly see it that way.

He was proven right. "No," Lisa replied scowling and mentally wondering, not for the first time, at the thought processes behind Tirolian – and by extension Zentraedi – military tactics that made such a move permissible. "We'll let them go. They are not a threat to us anymore."

 _Not that they were that much of a threat to begin with,_ she thought thinking of the battle that they'd just fought. It had been somewhat one sided despite the fact that the SDF-3 had been outnumber two to one. The alien plasma weapons had proven considerably less powerful than the weapons there defences were designed to deal with – if sensors were to believed those plasma bolts had barely a third of the energy behind them that Zentraedi cannons did – so the pinpoint barriers had had no difficulty dissipating the incoming blasts. Oh a few shots had gotten past the barriers – that was inevitable in any engagement – but they'd not done much damage beyond possibly putting some black smudges on the ships paintjob. The heat and energy of the blasts being well within the capabilities of their refractive/dispersive/ablative armour to withstand. All in all those guns hadn't been much of a threat to a battlefortress though they were powerful enough to rip apart smaller ships like a Garfish-class light cruiser or a Battle-class destroyer.

The same could not be said for their own guns.

Return fire from their primary particle cannon and combination cannon batteries had swiftly overpowered the aliens. Despite the presence of real shields on their vessels both hostile warships had been swiftly defeated with one outright destroyed and the other mission killed. And now under evacuation by its crew.

The alien attempt to attack them with fighters and more of those bomber craft had also proven to be futile. The fighters that had come at them had been easy pray for their Mark Three Foxfire interceptor missiles, the fifteen kilogram shaped plasma explosive warheads of the small, purely defensive missiles simply swatting them from the sky. The bombers well their secondary guns had swiftly taken care of them as for some reason only about half the fighters and bombers had come at them. By the time they'd finished burning them – and the capital ship that had launched them – from the sky the other fighters and bombers had vanished.

"Vanessa run a wide area scan," she ordered suddenly wary of a possible ambush as it was fully possible that the aliens were using some kind of stealth technology to hide from their sensors, that the wave that had come at them had merely been a distraction. "Look for the rest of the alien fighters and bombers. I want to know where they disappeared off to."

"I'm on it, Lisa," Vanessa replied immediately.

"Do you think they're going to try ambushing us ma'am," Scott asked turning his chair in place to look at them, knowing from experience that there were stealth systems that could defeat their sensors. Like the shadow dimensional shift field that the Haydonites had taught then how to use, well until they'd betrayed them as like everything else the dimensional shift field had been sabotaged to make it easier for the Haydonites to destroy their ships. Analysis of sensor records transferred to the _Ark Angel_ before the destruction of Space Station Liberty had proven that somehow the Haydonite beam weapons had interacted with the dimensional shift field in such a way that it created fatal instabilities in reflex power sources – disrupting the delicate balance inside a reflex furnace to the point where the energy loci became hopelessly desynchronised – causing devastating, and very fatal, overloads. The aliens could have a similar stealth technology though if they did why hadn't they used it in the battle in the way they had against the Invid?

"I wouldn't be surprised, Commander," Lisa replied, "this close to Earth it would be easy for them to use the magnetic field and gravitational mass of the planet to hide from our scans." Scott nodded in understanding. That was also a possibility as even robotech sensors had their limits, especially this close to the planet.

"Oh my god," Vanessa said aloud.

"What is it?" Lisa demanded.

"I… I've found the remaining fighters and bombers, Lisa," Vanessa answered in a tone of voice that told everyone on the bridge that they were not going to like where they were.

"Where are they?" Lisa asked.

"They're in atmosphere," Vanessa replied. "Sensors indicate that they're over the Los Angeles Metropolitan Area. They're bombing the crap out of it."

"Damn it," Lisa snarled.

"They must have used the destruction of their colleagues as a screen to enter the atmosphere," Rick mused aloud. "Cold bastards."

"Indeed," Rand replied, "is there anything we can do to help? Anything we can do to stop them?"

"No," Scott answered reluctantly an angry scowl on his face. Anger directed at the aliens for their ruthlessness and willingness to bomb a civilian target and anger at themselves for being helpless. "That far down into the atmosphere they'll be out of interceptor range. Even if they weren't the missiles are so small that they would never withstand the stresses of atmospheric entry."

"What about our energy weapons," Rook suggested. "Could we shoot them down from here with those?"

"Again no," Dr Lang replied, "the only energy weapons we have that could penetrate the atmosphere from here are our main batteries and they won't track fast enough to shoot down fighters."

"What about taking the ship down into the atmosphere," Rand suggested.

"While the ship is fully capable of atmospheric manoeuvring and landing I would advise strongly against it," Lang replied. "Manoeuvring a ship this size inside a planetary atmosphere is extremely complex and requires precise timing as well as a huge attention to detail otherwise we could easily plough into the side of a mountain or something. With so few crew at the moment it would be suicidal to even attempt it."

"So we can't do anything?" Rand asked.

"Not with the ship no," Rick replied "though we could send our drones down. Program them to attack and destroy the hostile fighters and bombers."

"Drones," Rook questioned.

"QF-5000 Phantom fighters," Rick explained. "A veritech descendant of the old QF-4000 Ghost drones. Each can either be remotely controlled from here or run of their own automated system. We'd just need to go to CIC – which is two decks directly below us – to launch and supervise them."

"Alright let's do that," Lisa replied. "Rick take Roy, Max and Commander Bernard down there and get as many Phantoms in the air and down to the planet as you can."

"On it, Lisa," Rick replied getting up from where he'd sat down at one of the secondary tactical stations. Roy, Max and Scott all did the same.

"I'll transport you down there," Ariel said stepping forward and gesturing for the four of them to gather around her. Knowing the Invid woman teleporting them would be faster than taking the lift down they did as she instructed and within moments all five of them vanished from the bridge in a flash of golden light.

"Oh that's so going to take getting used to," Rook said aloud shaking her head with a nod of agreement from Rand. Though they were both used to the fact that Ariel was an Invid by now it was still somewhat jarring for them to see her use any of the advanced abilities her form gave her. The only one of them who didn't find it jarring anymore was Scott and that was only because he'd had a little bit more time to get used to it due to him and Ariel leaving them behind on Earth went they were off on the _Icarus_ after Space Station Liberty went silent.

A sudden brilliant light filling the viewports caught everyone's attention. "What was that," Lisa demanded as the light faded.

"The second alien capital ship just exploded," Vanessa reported. "The crew must have set its self-destruct sequence before evacuating."

"Obviously they were afraid we'd board the ship and capture their records," Zor said logically, "after all they weren't to know there are only fourteen of us on this ship at the moment."

"Lisa message from combat, they're ready to launch the Phantoms," Kim reported.

"Very well open the launch bay then tell them to get those drones out there."

"Yes ma'am," Kim acknowledged.

Lisa smiled at the professional response before looking at the active projector fields and the holographic screens being displayed in them. Specifically at the tactical holograms that had automatically appeared when the ship went on a battle alert.

After a moment what she'd been waiting for appeared, icons and small transponder codes that indicated the Phantoms that would now be pouring out of hanger bays on the ships underside. The drones quickly formed up into squadron strength formations before streaking away from the ship and towards the atmosphere and the city of Los Angeles. A city that from the smoke plumes visible even from up here was now burning as the hostile alien forces mounted a merciless attack.

 _Hold on people,_ she thought to the civilians down there even though intellectually that they could not hear her. _Help's coming._

* * *

 **Author Notes: This has to be the longest chapter I have yet written for either version of this story. Obviously things in this chapter have gone very differently to the first time around, this time they destroyed the Goa'uld ships with conventional weapons only. I made that change for the simple reason that Robotech weapons would hardly be much use to Earth if they didn't have the ability to kill Goa'uld motherships quickly. It also has the advantage of keep the existence of the SDF-3's dual reflex cannons hidden, thus they'll come as a nasty surprise for some future bad guy.**

 **One other change that people are sure to have noticed is the lack of recognition of the SDF-3 shown by the SGC. I made that change because as a few reviewers pointed out originally at this point in the SG timeline the existence of the SDF-3 – since its from the cancelled Robotech II: Sentinels series – would only really be known to die hard Robotech fans as it was quite obscure at this time.**

 **If anyone is interested the idea for the Phantom drone veritechs comes from the proposed Robotech Academy series which indicated a stealth capable veritech drone fighter would appear. Since it lacks an official name at the moment and only exists as a concept sketch I ran with it and gave it the designation Phantom. I hope nobody minds. Oh and before anyone asks Apophis is dead, though Klorel is alive and more than a little pissed off over everything that's happened.**

 **Till next time stay safe.**


	6. Chapter 6

_**Ship of the Line: Pioneer's Dawn The Reboot**_

 **Disclaimer: I still don't own the characters that I am about to mangle around for my own amusement. Sadly all Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Stargate SG-1 and Robotech characters belong to Mutant Enemy Productions, MGM and Harmony Gold respectively, I am merely borrowing them and make absolutely no profit from their use. As a result please continue to keep the legal attack dogs – also known as lawyers – firmly muzzled and on a leash as I have no money to give anyone.**

 **Authors Note: Sorry about the immense delay with the update for this story, bet you all thought it was abandoned didn't ya? No it wasn't abandoned it merely went and got itself stuck in the linguistic quagmire that is writers block and has only recently worked its way free. So without further ado let's get cracking shall we?**

* * *

 **Chapter Six**

 **F-16 Fighter Squadron**

 **Approaching Los Angeles**

 **A Few Minutes Earlier**

Captain Cameron Mitchell resisted the impulse to frown as he guided his F-16 Fighting Falcon jet fighter through the skies towards Los Angeles. A few minutes ago all the squadrons on the Air Force base that he was stationed on had been ordered to scramble and move to intercept hostile bogies heading for Los Angeles.

Like many of his squad mates he was having great difficulty believing that this was actually happening. That a major American city was coming under an air born onslaught on a scale not seen on Earth since the dark days of the Second World War, though the brass at the base had been incredibly tight-lipped about who the enemy actually was. As a result they had absolutely no idea what kind of enemy aircraft they would be facing, they were literally going to be fighting in the dark.

And that did not sit well with him at all. He wasn't the only one as the rest of the squadron weren't any happier about it than he was. But orders were orders and in another few moments he and the others would be over the outskirts of Los Angeles and would see who the enemy was for themselves. They just had to get over the Hollywood Hills and then they'd be over the city. Hills that were passing by beneath them now and the city came into view…

…and Cameron couldn't stop the gasp of horror that escaped his lips.

The once great city of Los Angeles, a shining testament to the American Dream, was burning!

Even from here he could see massive fires, some had to be a dozen or more blocks across, raging as they fed on ruptured gas lines, petrol leaking from destroyed stations and vehicles and the remains of buildings that had literally been smashed by something tremendously powerful. A thick cloud of smoke and soot hanging over the city glowed a hellish red with the reflection of the fires burning over vast areas. _It's like seeing the city in the aftermath of the first wave of alien attacks in that Independence Day movie but made horribly real,_ he thought, feeling both horror and an intense burning rage at whoever was responsible for this outrage boil in his blood.

No sooner than that thought had passed through his head than something incredibly fast moving came down from somewhere above, and sliced through his wingman's fighter. Instantly the F-16 turned into a fireball as aviation fuel and ordinance detonated, tearing the fighter apart before the pilot even had a chance to register what was happening, let alone scream. The pilots of the remaining fighters – Cam included – stared in stunned shock for a few moments, before training kicked in and the squadron started taking evasive action to avoid whoever was firing at them.

Another dual blast came down from somewhere above, and another, and another. And this time Cam was able to see that the lethal blasts weren't machine gun or autocannon rounds as he would have expected them to be. Nor were they missiles. Instead the blasts looked like some kind of coherent energy bolt. _What the hell,_ he thought stunned a moment before another dual blast struck another F-16 turning craft and pilot alike into another freefalling ball of flaming debris.

Then the enemy appeared. Descending out of the smoke clouds came the strangest looking fighter craft that Cam had ever seen, craft that no mind on Earth could ever even conceive of let alone build. They seemed to consist of a flattened oval central pod with two bat-like wings that tapered forward and outward. Two cannons stuck out of the mid-point of the wings and he could see absolutely no sign of any engines, at least not anything that they'd recognise as an aircraft engine. It led to one inevitable, and almost impossible, revelation.

There assailants were aliens.

"Holy crap were under attack from ET," he said into the radio as three of the craft shot past, rattling them with their wake.

"Cut the chatter," Colonel Tim Dalby said from the lead plane. "Whoever or whatever these things are they're shooting up our city and we've got to stop them. All remaining fighters break formation and attack, repeat break formation and at…arrghh," his CO's voice dissolved into a scream as one of the energy bolts from some of the fighters still overhead sliced through his right wing, tearing it clean off and making the F-16 corkscrew out of control towards the ground before detonating fuel completely immolated it.

"Alright guys you heard him," Cam said snapping to his duty as the next ranking member of the squadron. "Break formation and attack." Even as he finished speaking he brought his fighter around and dove after the first three alien fighters, they were just ahead of him firing bolts of golden light down upon a house instantly blowing out the windows while causing a chunk of the roof to collapse and setting the building on fire. Cam did his best not to think about the fact that whoever was inside, if there had been anyone still there, would now be suffering the horrendous death of being burned alive.

Instead he focused on avenging them.

With a flick of a switch he armed his missiles and attempted to target the closest enemy fighter. Somewhat to his surprise he immediately got the solid tone of missile lock on, not questioning his good fortune he, after saying the burned in warning of 'fox two' into the squadron frequency, fired sending a Sidewinder air-to-air missile streaking at the alien machine. The alien fighter tried to dodge but the missile stuck to its tail like glue and a millisecond later hit its target turning it into a fireball.

Cam didn't have chance to celebrate his first victory for even as their comrade died the other two alien fighters spun around with impossible agility and send a fusillade of plasmatic death towards him from their cannons. He immediately began taking evasive action. _Whoever or whatever these guys are they're lousy shots,_ he thought as he easily evaded their energy blasts while targeting them in return. _Plus whatever this golden shit is it's slower than a cannon round. Weird. Aren't energy blasts supposed to travel at near light speed?_

"Fox two, fox two," he said into the radio as the solid tone of missile lock sounded in his ears, the fighter jolting slightly as the missiles separated from his underwing weapon pylons and sped towards the aliens. Both took the hits full on and were instantly immolated by the blasts.

"Well these guys aren't so tough," he said softly to himself a moment before his helmet speakers crackled to life.

"Little help here please," Lieutenant Malcolm Price one of his squadron mates called and Cam looked around quick to see an F-16 with two of the alien fighters on its tail trying to nail it with bolts of super-condensed energy. The fighter weaved and dodged but the alien pilots were persistent and kept firing with everything they had attempting to box him in so they could blow Mack to hell.

"I'm coming, Mack," he called swinging his fighter around and locking onto one of the aliens pursuing Mack's fighter. "Fox two," he said unleashing another Sidewinder. The missile shot away and tracked the alien fighter with single minded determination and a second later impacted the machine turning into a fireball, the shockwave knocked the other machine off balance – long enough for Cam to finish it off with a burst of twenty millimetre shells from his Vulcan Gatling gun.

"Thanks, Mitchell," Mack said.

"Your welcome," Cam replied before glancing at his HUD and noticed a much larger contact approaching from off to the right. A glance out the window showed him what looked like a small flying pyramid of all things flying straight and level, a glowing object dropping out of a hatch on its underside, a hatch that honestly reminded him of bomb bay doors. As he watched the energy ball – which is honestly what the alien weapon looked like – fell to Earth and impacted a large office building with a tiered effect front. Every window instantly shattered, sending high speed razor-blade like shards of glass flying in all directions even as the rest of the structure instantly seemed to collapse in upon itself sending smoke, dust and flames into the already debris choked sky. Clearly those energy bombs packed one heck of a punch if just one of them could reduce a building that big to little more than smouldering rubble.

"Hey Mack you see that big one on the three o'clock position?" he asked into the radio.

"I see it boss. Looks like a bomber of some type."

"Agreed now let's get it."

"Right with you, boss."

Cam grinned and brought his fighter around before shooting towards the larger alien craft. Which immediately seemed to notice him closing as a large turret on its underside turned in his direction and started spewing more of those golden energy bolts in his direction. "Oh no you're not getting me with that glowing shit," he muttered as he evaded the blasts while flicking through his index of available weapons, and selected his two Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missiles or AMRAAM's and targeted the alien ship. Immediately he got the familiar lock on tone in his ear.

"Fox three, fox three," he said before pulling the trigger. The F-16 jolted slightly as the weapons fell away from their mounts before shooting towards the alien craft.

"Fox three, fox three," Mack echoed firing his own AMRAAM's.

The four missiles shot across the distance separating them from the alien in mere seconds, each striking home with the usual accuracy of modern weapons and exploding. It was immediately obvious though that something was wrong as the blast waves flattened out, visibly spreading around the alien ship without apparently harming it. As the fire of the explosions faded a shimmering, translucent orange quasi-crystalline looking energy barrier appeared to be enveloping the ship, deflecting the heat and energy of the HE warheads away from the hull of the craft, though it didn't seem to stop the kinetic impact as the craft briefly slewed to the side, momentarily knocked off its flight path by the force of impact.

"Oh fuck. That thing's got an energy shield," Mack exclaimed in shock as the two startled fighter jocks struggled to process the impossible sight they'd just seen. "Now this is really like something out of Independence Day."

"Shut up and hit them again," Cam replied as he targeted the alien with the last of his Sidewinders. "Fox two."

As with the AMRAAM the Sidewinder crossed the distance between him and the alien in a literal blink of an eye. Unfortunately it had even less luck damaging the alien craft than its bigger brother did as the shield around the alien seemed to contemptuously brush the explosive force aside, this time with such ease that the craft didn't even wobble in the air.

"Shit what does it take to stop that thing?" Cam asked shocked that the alien had shrugged the missile off so effortlessly. A moment later he had his answer as a six missiles, each smaller than any missile he'd ever seen in his life before, impacted the craft from somewhere off to the left. The tiny weapons exploding with more force than anything he'd ever seen this side of a cruise missile, the fireball of the explosions completely enveloping the ship.

As the blasts faded Cam and Mack were both surprised to see the ship was, somewhat amazingly, still there. Though it now looked distinctly the worse for wear with scorch marks on its hull and no sign of its energy shield, half a second later a blue beam of energy – also coming from somewhere off to the left – lanced into the craft where it obviously hit something vital as the alien blew apart with incredible violence. A second later a blue aircraft, with the distinctive look of a craft made on Earth, shot past where the craft had been.

And Cam's eyes widened in surprise and recognition as he behold a craft from his childhood and a show that was responsible for him wanting to become a pilot in the first place. "That can't be," he breathed in shock as before his eyes the craft changed, morphing from a fighter into a giant robot that landed easily on the ground, before hefting a rifle like pod and contemptuously starting to shoot more alien fighters down with short blue beams – that were more like elongated energy pulses than true beams – of relativistic charged particles.

"Boss I can't believe I'm saying this but is that a veritech?" Mack asked. "Because it sure as hell looks like a Robotech Alpha fighter in battloid mode to me."

"Looks like it," Cam agreed. "Though don't ask me how the hell it's possible that it's here. I'm just glad that it is as we could really use the firepower those things are supposed to have."

"Yeah but if it's here then what's going to show up from Robotech next? The Zentraedi?"

"Oh God I hope not. I have no idea how we'd go about fighting those guys, how the hell would we even hurt a fifty foot tall man? Let alone one wearing enough armour to build a battleship and carrying around a heavy artillery piece like you or I would a rifle?"

"Good point."

"Anyway enough dawdling we've still got a battle to fight and some ET's to send packing."

"Ah I don't think so boss. Look at your HUD."

Cam blinked and did so. To see that all the red dots of enemy fighter contacts had vanished from the screens. _Have they all been shot down,_ he thought stunned for a moment. Then his attention was grabbed as the battloid he and Mack had been watching shot up into the air, morphed mid-point into a fighter plane again and then shooting off towards space displaying a truly breath-taking acceleration. In mere seconds it was gone, vanished from sight as if it had never been present at all. And from the chatter he could hear on the squad frequency that fighter hadn't been alone, but there had been others present – a lot of them – only they were all now heading back towards the stars.

"What do we do now," Mack asked.

"Start surveying the damage to the city as much as we can I guess," Cam replied. "At least till command tells us otherwise."

"Alright boss."

With that the two Air Force pilots began to guide their planes on a slow survey of the burning remains of what had once been called the City of Angels. A city that in less than fifteen minutes of the most brutal fighting seen on the planet since the Second World War had been reduced in most areas to flaming rubble. As both Cam and Mack flew they knew, in their heart of hearts, that while this particular battle maybe over now the war was far from over.

It had in fact only just begun.

* * *

 **Bridge**

 **SDF-3 Pioneer**

 **That Same Time**

"Lisa the last of the hostile forces attacking Los Angeles have been destroyed," Vanessa reported to the relief of everyone on the bridge. "Our drones are now returning to the ship."

"Understood," Lisa replied from the command chair. For a moment she hesitated to ask the next question, not wanting to hear the answer but knowing that she had to. "What's the status of the city?"

"Sensors indicate that the city has sustained extremely heavy damage," Vanessa reported doing her best to remain professional and dispassionate in the report. Despite having reported on worse damage to human cities in the past, especially in the weeks and months following the Rain of Death, it never truly got any easier. "There are massive fires burning in multiple city sectors and meteorological scans indicate that they're sucking in enough oxygen from the surrounding environment that a Santa Anna wind is beginning to form. If it continues to build at this rate, then the current blazes will merge into a firestorm within the next few hours."

"Is there anything we can do to stop it," Rand asked, though he'd never actually seen a firestorm he'd read about them and the horrendous devastation that they could unleash upon a city. Firestorms had been responsible for the vast majority of the deaths on Earth after the Rain of Death as the reflex cannon bombardment from Dolza's ships had triggered a great many of the fiery maelstroms that had ravaged entire continents burning towns and cities not immediately hit by the reflex beams to the ground.

"Unfortunately no," Dr Lang replied with a sigh.

"With all the advanced robotechnology we've got on this ship there has to be something that we can do," the Argentinean resistance fighter insisted.

"If this ship had a full crew then we would have been able to do something about the fires," Lisa explained, "it would be a simple matter of sending down fighters armed with fire suppression bombs and dropships loaded with chemical flame retardants to put the fires out. But our ships are not normally set up for that kind of large scale firefighting operation, there is no need for it in space after all. They would have to be refitted and the targeting systems – especially on the fighters – reconfigured for such duties."

"And since there are only fifteen of us on this entire ship I'm guessing that doing that would take far too long," Rand said with a sigh, accepting the explanation.

"It would take hours at least to refit even a single squadrons worth of fighters, especially as most of us aren't engineers. By then it would be far too late," Dr Lang confirmed making the younger man's armour clad shoulders drop. "The only thing we can do for those poor people down in LA is pray, pray that state and federal emergency services are able to get the fires under control before the worst happens."

Sammy's console chose that moment to give a chirp. "Lisa the drones are approaching the landing bays," she reported.

"Open the bays and let them in, Sammy," Lisa ordered.

"Aye ma'am."

"So once the drones are back on-board what do we do," Rook asked.

"We carry on with what originally brought us up here," Lisa replied, "see if we can find out what the hell has happened to the thousands of people who should be aboard this ship, and find out how we all came to be on Earth from different points in the timeline. Assuming this is even our Earth as I'm no longer convinced that it is."

"You think that we've been transported to another reality as well as coming from different points in time?" Rand asked.

"It certainly makes sense that we would be," Lang mused aloud. "I certainly don't remember an attack on the planet by hostile aliens with an Egyptian design aesthetic to their ships, in fact the first time we ever encountered aliens in person was when Commander Breetai's fleet defolded behind the moon in 2009. At this point in the timeline in our world our only real enemy was each other as the Global Civil War was still raging on. Zor don't your people have a theory about universe displacement?"

Zor Prime nodded. "They do and it's a very old theory," he admitted, "one dating back more than a thousand years, to our first experiments with hyperspace folding technology, long before my progenitor's time. Unfortunately neither I nor my progenitor are overly familiar with it as the original Zor was a xeno-biologist and genetic engineer and later a cloner, not an astrophysicist."

"Huh I always thought your people didn't possess space-folding until the original you created the protoculture matrix," Dante commented.

"No we had long been capable of interstellar travel and indeed traded extensively with neighbouring races like the Karbarrans," Zor explained. "It's just until robotechnology was developed our hyperspace capabilities were much more limited than they are now. Our ships were considerably slower and couldn't jump as far, to the point where it was quite common for ship crews and passengers to spend longer voyages in a form of cryo-stasis to conserve both power and resources."

"Oh," Dante replied making a mental note to learn a bit more about the history of the Tirolians a.k.a. the Robotech Masters as before now he hadn't really known much about them. Well beyond what was necessary to blow their admittedly very powerful bioroid battle mecha into a thousand small, smoking bits. He certainly hadn't realised that they'd been a spacefaring race for a millennia or more but now that he thought about it he realised it made sense. It also explained very handily how and why their general level of technology was so much more advanced than anything they'd had on Earth at the time.

Another chirp from Sammy's console brought him out of his thoughts. "Lisa the last of our drones are aboard," Sammy reported, "closing landing bays."

"Acknowledged, Sammy," Lisa replied a moment before a semi-familiar flash of golden light filled the bridge and Ariel, Rick, Scott, Max and Roy returned to the bridge from the CIC where the latter three had controlled the drones from.

"Welcome back," Lisa said turning to look at them. "Nice work down there."

"Thanks though they were hardly a challenge," Rick answered, "whoever those guys were they're not the best the pilots in the universe and they're absolutely lousy shots. It was almost too easy to shoot them down."

"You got that right, little brother," Roy agreed "if I was that bad a shot I'd have been sent back to basic training so fast my head would still be spinning. I get the impression that they've not fought anyone who can really hit them back in a long time and thus have largely forgotten how to really fight. Which means that whatever race he belongs to Apophis' people have been the dominant power in this galaxy for a very long time."

"Which only adds more credence to your theory, Lisa," Lang commented.

"What theory is that?" Rick asked looking at his wife with interest, wondering what she'd come up with this time.

Lisa for her part smiled back before explaining what they'd just been talking about, and about how they had all been displaced not just in time but in realities. It took all of ten minutes to fill him and the other four in on the discovery.

"It makes sense," Rick said thoughtfully at the end. "Of course now the question becomes what are we going to do about it? Dimensional displacement on top of the temporal displacement adds a whole new set of problems to getting back to where and when we're all supposed to be."

Lisa frowned and started to open her mouth to say that she was open to suggestions from everyone on how to proceed. But before but before any sound could emerge from her mouth a wave of dizziness and disorientation raced through her head. _What the hell is this,_ she had just enough time to think before a white light enveloped her and the world faded away into darkness.

* * *

 **Somewhere Outside Space-Time**

 **That Same Time**

Janus chuckled as he both sensed and saw the enchantment he'd empowered being broken. Though his viewing pool he observed Rupert Giles, accompanied by two others he recognised as Jana Kalderesh – or as she currently called herself Jenny Calendar - and the ensouled vampire who called himself Angel instead of using his old human name of Liam O'Connell, hurl the bust Ethan had used as an anchor for the spell to the floor shattering it into fragments. As the wave of arcane energy spread out reverting most of those affected by the spell to their normal selves he decided one final tweak was needed to ensure a better future than one those fools who called themselves the Powers That Be had planned was needed.

Reaching out with his power he subtly altered the wave as it spread beyond the Earth's atmosphere and made contact with the SDF-3. Instead of immediately returning the people aboard the recreated ship to their normal selves his altered wave ensured that while their original personalities returned they all retained the knowledge, experience, skills and in some cases the biology, of the people they had dressed as. After all it wouldn't do them, SG-1 and Earth in general any good if they didn't know how to operate, maintain and duplicate the ships technologies. Ensuring the memories and so on remained and wouldn't fade away – as they otherwise would have done as the Powers magically suppressed all bar what they felt they needed to know in order to serve their plans, rather than what they actually needed to know – handily accomplished that.

As the wave passed he withdrew, a profound satisfaction growing in his mind as he already sensed the changes taking place on the Tau lines forging a variety of new possible and even probable futures. Some were good and some were bad, such was the nature of things – the Powers were right about one thing their always had to be a balance but not between good and evil, as they believed, but between chaos and order as too much of either was harmful – but all were better outcomes than what the Powers had planned before. _Mission accomplished,_ he thought with a smirk worthy of a certain champion of his appearing on his faces.

His smirk faded though as he considered the cost of his intervention. Millions of innocents had died or been injured during the Goa'uld attack on Los Angeles. Thousands more would be displaced in the next couple of days as the fires started by the assault would burn for days. While the loss of innocents was deeply regrettable it was a necessary sacrifice in order to ensure a better future.

The smirk returned for a moment as he considered another side effect of the attack. The destruction of the Wolfram & Hart offices in LA – the largest of the demonic law firms in the whole of North America – by a Goa'uld plasma bomb would certainly help in the long term as it would have dealt the plans of the evil trinity of the Wolf, the Ram and the Hart there most serious blow in centuries. A blow that would take them at least a decade or more to recover from and one that meant that the more suspect and unscrupulous individuals involved in the Stargate Program – like a certain Senator and a few senior officers in the National Intelligence Directorate – would have to keep their heads down and their hands clean as the law firm would no longer be able to cover for them – and have its minions do their dirty work for them – should their misdeeds come to light. In fact it might be amusing to see what would happen if they did come to light, he made a mental note to look into it a bit later.

For now though his smirk transformed into smile as he, metaphorically speaking, sat back to watch exactly what happened next. Despite his nature as a deity of time even he couldn't know the immediate future, as it was the free will of mortals and the choices that allowed that determined precise outcomes, only get a sense of where things were going. While that could be frustrating at times now was not one of them. Now he looked forward to seeing what happened now, what the exact fallout of tonight's events would be. One thing he was sure about though was it was going to be both amusing and interesting.

Very interesting.

* * *

 **Authors Notes: Well another chapter of the rewrite of this story bites the dust. Once again I apologise for the huge delay with the update, it was unfortunately unavoidable. On another note I only foresee this fic lasting for another couple of chapters at the most, just so we can get some of the immediate fallout of the attack out of the way. Plus of course there is the fate of SG-1 to consider as they are still currently in stasis, drifting towards Earth in Goa'uld life pods.**

 **Of course once this particular story ends it won't be the end of this ship of the line universe. Far from it in point of fact as I do have a fair few plans for sequel stories showing how these events, and what will immediately follow them, affect both the Buffy and Stargate timelines.**

 **Before anyone asks about Cam only being a captain at this point in time I would like to remind you all that this is set nearly nine years before he appears in the canon show to take command of SG-1 at the beginning of season nine. Given the length of time and that he was only promoted to lieutenant colonel after he recovered from being shot down during the Battle of Antarctica at the end of season seven I thought it not unreasonable that – like Sam Carter – he's still a captain at this point in his life and career. Though I will admit that for a while I was tempted to use Sheppard instead of Cam but ultimately decided against using him as while I will always hate the whole Ori storyline I've always liked Cam more than John 'can't do no wrong and even I do will get away with it due to my super-strong ATA gene' Sheppard.**


	7. Chapter 7

_**Ship of the Line: Pioneer's Dawn the Reboot**_

 **Disclaimer: I still don't own the characters that I am about to mangle around for my own amusement - sadly all Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Stargate SG-1 and Robotech characters belong to Mutant Enemy Productions, MGM, and Harmony Gold respectively – I am merely borrowing them and make absolutely no profit from their use. So please continue to keep the legal attack dogs – also known as lawyers – firmly muzzled and on a leash as I have no money to give anyone.**

 **Authors Note: First off let me apologise profusely for the immense delay in this update, hopefully it will not be repeated. In the first part of this chapter I've had to invent a little bit of science with regards to how the engines used by the Goa'uld work to explain why the US Air Force jets couldn't fire at the Goa'uld from over the horizon as they would be able to do with any earthbound enemy but could only engage at closer ranges with cannons and head seeking – and laser guided – missiles.**

* * *

 **Chapter Seven**

 **Presidential Bunker**

 **A Few Minutes Earlier**

"Mr President it's been confirmed," General Brian Roberts reported calmly after putting down a phone. "The Goa'uld attack upon Los Angeles has ended, the fighters launched from the unknown vessel that destroyed the Goa'uld motherships shot the last of them down a few minutes ago, before returning to their ship."

"Where is the alien ship now," President Julian Marcel asked from where he was sitting at the head of the conference table that they were all gathered around as they attempted to deal with this unprecedented attack on their nation. An attack that would have surely been even more devastating than it had already been for the massive, and some would say ominously silent, alien warship that had turned up so unexpectedly over California.

Turned up and proceeded to seemingly effortlessly rip the Goa'uld a new one.

He had to admit he was intensely curious about that obviously incredibly powerful alien warship and its crew. Who were they? Why had they come here? How long had they really been here? And what did they know about the Goa'uld? They were all among the questions that he so desperately wanted to ask them.

"Near orbit radar reports that the vessel has moved into a stationary orbit in the L5 Lagranian Point between Earth and the Moon," Roberts reported, "aside from recovering the fighter squadrons it launched to defeat the Goa'uld forces it hasn't moved or done anything else. We are continuing to beam communications requests at them but so far there has been no response, meaning either they can't hear us for some reason or they're deliberately ignoring us."

"Could our radio signals be somehow too weak to be received by the aliens," Julian asked directing the question at his scientific advisor.

"No sir," Doctor Patrick Sterns replied, "however given their apparent level of technology its perfectly possible that our radio signals are too primitive a method of communication for whatever comm systems they have to register let alone understand."

Julian nodded in agreement and understanding as that prospect had indeed occurred to him as well. "Maybe so but we must still attempt to contact them," he said at last before turning the discussion to the eight-hundred-pound gorilla in the room that they were all trying to ignore even as they knew that they had to face it. "General Roberts what's the status of Los Angeles?"

Roberts grimaced. "It's bad sir," he admitted, throttling down – with effort – the feelings of rage and pain over the attack on one of the nation's largest cities and the death toll which was sure to be absolutely horrendous, "for some reason we were not able to maintain radar locks to shoot the Goa'uld craft down from over the horizon. Thus, they had several minutes of unchallenged access to Los Angeles before our fighters could get into range and engage with their on-board cannons and use the shorter-range laser tracking and heat seeking guidance options on their missile. Thus, the city…" his voice trailed off as he couldn't bring himself to say it.

"The city is what, General," Julian demanded to know.

"Large parts of the city are in ruins sir. Both our surveillance satellites and our returning fighters report massive destruction and fires burning all over the city. We have no information on casualties now but they are bound to be extremely high."

"Jesus," Julian breathed taking a moment to cross himself as his Anglican faith asserted itself. "But what do you mean by our missiles weren't able to maintain a radar target lock?"

"They just weren't able to Mr President," Roberts answered, "the _Theodore Roosevelt_ carrier group fired a full salvo of radar guided anti-aircraft missiles towards the Goa'uld forces heading for LA, but as soon as the missiles were launched the seeker heads lost weapons lock and had to be remote detonated."

"Do we know why?"

"It is impossible to know with any real certainty," Patrick replied. "Though if I had to guess I would say it likely has something to do with the propulsion systems the Goa'uld use seemingly in all their space and air craft."

"What do you mean Pat?"

"While we do not yet understand even the basic scientific principles behind it we know that the Goa'uld use an incredibly sophisticated inertia less propulsion system. From what little we've been able to determine so far; the system uses precise applications of gravitational and anti-gravitational forces to create a highly-localised distortion in the space-time continuum. A distortion that the Goa'uld ship rides, kind of like a surfer riding a wave, to achieve motion and to pull turns that would rip any craft with a conventional Newtonian propulsion system apart. In theory, such a spatial distortion could prevent the more limited radar of a missiles seeker head from maintaining a targeting lock."

"But why would we still be able to track them with ground based radar?" Roberts asked.

"I'm not sure but it could simply be a matter of power," Patrick admitted, "our ground and ship based radars are far stronger than what can be mounted on either a missile or even on a fighter plane. At least at the current time."

"Our pilots reported that the alien ships fighters had no such problems," Roberts commented.

"Yes, but like the rest of their technology their radar systems, or radar equivalent systems, are certainly a lot more advanced than anything we are currently capable of building," Patrick answered.

"Good point," Julian admitted knowing that any race capable of building any interstellar spacecraft – let alone one on the scale of the California vessel – would be at a minimum a century ahead of their own technology. It was one of the facts that made the Goa'uld such a terrifying threat despite their very approach traditional approach to warfare. He put those thoughts out of his head before turning the topic back to the plight of the City of Angels. "What can be done to help Los Angeles?"

"Firefighting aircraft are being mobilised to help the city as we speak. FEMA and the Red Cross are also dispatching search and rescue crews to the city," Roberts replied then grimaced. "But Mr President I must be honest and say that given the extent of the fires already I don't know how much of an impact they are going to be able to make, especially with the Santa Anna winds beginning to blow. If the wind continues to rise – which it easily could as the fires draw in fresh oxygen – then they could easily whip the flames up into a firestorm and if that happens…"

"Then large parts of LA, possibly even the entire city, will be burnt to the ground," Julian finished going pale as it was a nightmare scenario and one not experienced by the United States since the firestorm that had burned in San Francisco after the great earthquake of 1906, a storm that had razed vast areas of the once thriving metropolis to the ground in the days after the quake. Los Angeles was the second largest city in the nation, only New York was larger, if such a catastrophe happened now then literally millions would die or be made homeless. Hell, he shuddered to think how many were already dead or homeless, either from the bombing or the fires.

He shook off those thoughts. "Coordinate with FEMA I want everything possible done for those people," he said.

"Yes sir." Roberts acknowledged a second before the phone on the table rang and he picked it up. "Yes?"

From his position at the head of the table Julian watched as the Air Force General frowned as he listened to whatever was being said. After a moment, the general looked at him. "Sir near orbit radar has picked up five small objects entering the atmosphere," he reported. "Their trajectory indicates that they originated from the second Goa'uld mothership before she exploded. They don't appear to be powered and from the size near orbit radar believes them to be one man escape capsules of some type."

"Where are, they coming down?" Julian asked wondering if those capsules contained SG-1. On one hand, he hoped they didn't as it would save him and the Air Force brass a few headaches on what to do with them – especially Colonel O'Neill and Captain Carter – for disobeying orders and going through the Stargate to stop the Goa'uld attack that Doctor Jackson had warned them was coming. Had they succeeded in their self-appointed mission then the two-soldier's gross insubordination could have been overlooked, but they hadn't and would have to be dealt with.

The question was how to do it.

They could of course court martial them but then they'd lose the brilliant mind of Samantha Carter. And then there was the matter of Doctor Jackson, while they could terminate his employment contract that would cost them quite a bit. While not a physicist Jackson was a brilliant man in his own rite, and his knowledge of ancient languages – and the fact that thanks to a year of living on Abydos he spoke fluent Goa'uld – was impressive, as was his ability for deductive reasoning. Losing him would be a heavy blow indeed. The Jaffa defector, Teal'c, was even more of a thorny issue, especially as he was aware of what the NID wanted to do with him – and their argument that, as a non-human, the Geneva Convention did not protect him – regardless of the loss of intelligence on the Goa'uld that would surely result from the Jaffa being 'examined' by NID scientists and doctors who were known to often drive a juggernaut through such inconvenient things as the Hippocratic Oath.

Thus, it was quite the conundrum.

"At their current speed and angle of entry radar predicts that they'll come down somewhere in or around the British Isles," the general replied jolting him out of his thoughts. "We can't be sure where now as the entry vector is very shallow."

Julian sighed. _I suppose it was too much to ask that they'd come down somewhere in the US where we could pick them up without fuss,_ he thought, _as it is if they're going to come down where our European allies will be able to get to them first. And they're going to have a hell of a lot of questions for both them and us. Especially given the impossible to cover up attack on LA and that very visible battle in orbit._

"Understood," he said after a moment even as grimaces flew around the table at the report, everyone present knowing that getting SG-1 back would not be easy in the aftermath of the attack as every nation would be wanting answers about it. Though he supposed it could have been worse, they could have been coming down in Russia or communist ruled China – in either case they could have forgotten getting SG-1 back quickly if at all. "Alert the state department to prepare to negotiate their repatriation with the British."

"Yes sir."

* * *

 **SDF-3 Pioneer**

 **Earth-Lunar Lagranian Point**

Xander Harris blinked in confusion as, with a suddenness that was truly breath-taking, he suddenly found himself back in control of his body. _What! What happened?_ he thought, before shivering as the memories played before his eyes. Being down in Sunnydale acting as escort for an increasing sugar high bunch of rug rats, feeling an odd tingle as something invisible but irresistibly powerful washed over him, suddenly ceasing to be Alexander Harris but instead becoming Admiral Richard 'Rick' Hunter. And everything that had happened since then.

 _Did we just prevent an alien invasion attempt,_ he thought in shock _and is LA really in flames after a vengeance attack by alien fighters and bombers after we blew their capital ships to dust?_ Mentally he shook himself and carefully sat up from where he'd been sprawled on. Somehow, he wasn't surprised to find himself still on the expansive, brightly lit bridge of the SDF-3. Which kind of confirmed to him that the last few hours had not been an incredibly realistic dream but had really happened. And he could think of only one explanation for what had happened to him and the others he could see sprawled around or slumped in chairs at various positions around the bridge.

They were the victims of a spell.

 _Ugh magic. I hate magic,_ he thought, _and didn't G-Man say that Halloween is supposed to be a quiet night for the undead and other supernatural goings on?_ Though given that Earth had just been apparently attacked by _aliens_ and they'd stopped them, but not quickly enough to stop the vile fiends from bombing the crap out of Los Angeles, he supposed that it was in some way fortunate that the spell had a) happened, b) that it had turned them into people with the knowledge and skills needed to stop the aliens – whoever they were – before they could lay waste to the planet, and c) had given them this ship and with it the means to stop them.

"Harris what the hell just happened?" a male voice said from somewhere off to the right of him, a voice that touched the echo left in him by the hyena possession last year. Xander turned in the direction the voice had come from.

To see Tor Hauer looking back at him, face a mask of bafflement and confusion. It wasn't quite the face he remembered, Tor's features had somehow changed becoming more chiselled, more classically handsome than before. The formerly blond member of the Pack was pulling at his hair frantically, hair that had changed both in colour and length from the short blond spikes that he'd favoured since junior high. His hair instead was now long, tied back in a ponytail with a single quiff hanging down on his forehead. It was also a dark blue almost navy in colour. With a shocked jolt, he realised that it had previously been a wig that the other teen had been wearing to appear more like Scott Bernard, but which had now become his real hair.

Without even thinking about it his own hand shot up. To find that his own wig had become real hair as well. _Great,_ he thought with a mental sigh as he also noticed that the uniform sleeve felt quite a bit tighter meaning it had either somehow shrunk or he'd gained quite a bit of muscle mass on top of the hair. Somehow, he knew it was the latter and not the former. _I wonder what other permanent changes have been made to us by the spell. And if I ever find out who cast it I'm going to shove a battloids gun pod up where the sun doesn't shine and pull the trigger._

"My guess is we were the victims of some kind of spell," he answered at last.

Tor groaned at that, recalling his last – and very unpleasant – experience with magic. Being possessed by a primal hyena spirit, eating the football team's mascot raw and then killing and eating Principal Flutie, all the result of getting caught up in someone else's primal magic spell, was not something you just forgot. Much as he wished he could forget it as he could do without those nightmares thank you very much. Nightmares that had seen his best friend Kyle turn to drugs and alcohol to escape them and the emotions that came with them; especially the guilt over the death of Flutie and shame over the fact that they hadn't been able to stop those _things_ that took them over doing such a horrible thing to what had been such a kind man.

Not that he had been able to escape those feelings.

Instead the descent into alcoholism and drug abuse had simply resulted in his parents removing him from school and chucking him into an expensive detox programme somewhere in upstate Oregon – which from what he'd heard wasn't going well as Kyle was desperately clinging to taking the substances that he felt helped him forget what had happened to them all. Yet here he was again, caught up in a spell.

Though he supposed that it could have been worse. At least this time he hadn't been turned into a hyena in human form, instead he'd been turned into Scott Bernard and now having the memories of growing up aboard a gigantic colony ship orbiting Tirol – most Terrans staying on the colony ships as Tirol's gravity was considerably lighter than Earth's and would cause muscle weakening if experienced to long – eventually coming to Earth with the goal of booting some Invid squatters off his ancestral homeworld and everything that had happened after that including falling in love with Ariel.

And who'd apparently just helped stop some real-life aliens from attacking Earth.

"Ugh I hate magic," he complained. "Why do we always end up getting caught up in other people's spells?"

"Join the club and I wish I knew," Xander replied completely understanding the other teens feelings, the hyena possession, and other things he'd seen since learning the truth of the world had gifted him with a healthy dislike of magic unlike Willow who he knew found magic fascinating. Awkwardly he got back to his feet and swayed slightly as his body felt wrong, different to how it had been just a few hours ago, he felt heavier and stronger – something the fit of the uniform also confirmed.

"So now what," Tor asked as he got his own feet under him, like Xander swaying in the process as his body didn't quite feel right anymore. Plus, he had the unexpected weight of the armour he was wearing, which from the weight of it was no longer the foam and moulded plastic thing it had been but was now made of an incredibly advanced and durable metallised ceramic alloy. An alloy that like this ship hadn't existed in anything other than science fiction until a few short hours ago.

"Well first off, we need to wake everyone up and make sure they're alright," Xander replied, "then after that we really need to talk about what we're going to do now. Given what's happened and how we've all been seemingly changed I doubt we'll be able to return to our lives as they were before."

Tor nodded. "Good point," he agreed knowing that Xander was right and even if he hadn't been he wouldn't have argued the point with him, the tiny part of him that still thought of the other teen, well not really a teen anymore thanks to the spell, as alpha ensured that.

"So where do we start?" he asked.

"You start with Heidi," Xander instructed. "I'll start with Buffy, she's less likely to go 'slayer smash' if I'm the one waking her up than if it was you waking her."

Tor blinked. "Buffy's the Slayer?" he asked shocked. When he and the others had researched online what had happened to them, what the primal spell had exactly done to them, they'd come across a few articles regarding the Slayer. Especially how she was supposedly the one girl in all the world with the power to oppose vampires, demons and the forces of darkness. A real life Chosen One and to Rhonda and Heidi the ultimate expression of 'girl power'.

"You know about the Slayer?" Xander asked surprised by the development. In his experience, nobody outside of the supernatural community, or people like him who were vampire/demon hunters, knew anything about the Slayer. Or if they did know about her considered her to be a myth on a par with the other great mythical heroes of antiquity like Hercules and Achilles.

Certainly, they did not believe she was a real person.

"Yeah we found a few articles on her when we were researching what… what happened. It was kind of hard to believe though Buffy being the Slayer explains so, so much."

Xander frowned and was about to ask Tor exactly what he meant by that. However, before he could speak a groan from the direction of the command chair caught his attention and he glanced over to see that Buffy was starting to stir. "We'll talk more about this later," he said looking back at Tor. "Start seeing to Heidi and the others while I deal with Buffy."

"Alright," Tor agreed moving over to where Heidi was sprawled out on the floor.

Xander watched him go for a moment before making his own way over to where Buffy was slumped in the commander's chair. The now brown-haired Slayer was making a few slight, involuntary movements as she rose rapidly towards consciousness. After a few seconds her eyes flickered open and it was all Xander could do not to gasp as they weren't brown like they'd been before instead Buffy's eyes were now the same vivid green that Lisa's were supposed to be.

"You okay Buff," he asked prompting Buffy to groan again before blinking.

"Xander wh…wh…what happened," she asked stammering over the words even as he eyes were caught by the changes her best male friend next to her boyfriend had undergone. His facial features appeared slightly older and leaner, the last traces of childhood puppy fat having been somehow burned away and there had been a subtle but noticeably change in the blue tints of the contacts he was wearing, somehow, she doubted they were contacts now. Though startling what really grabbed her attention was the fact that he was noticeably bigger than he'd been earlier his muscles visibly larger.

She was about to ask him what had happened to him when she remembered everything that had taken place over the last few hours. Due to being the Slayer she'd sensed the immense wave of magic that had washed over Sunnydale but had been unable to fight against it. But then that was always the case with magic, which was one of the reasons why she absolutely hated dealing with it, she much preferred it when she could just beat the crap out of whatever supernatural baddies were about before killing them.

As it was she'd been reduced to a helpless observer in her own body. Though she had to admit she had gotten a kick out of seeing that suddenly real laser pistol kill multiple vampires with effortless ease. The look of dumbfounded shock on Spikes face when one of his minions had been immolated before his eyes was one that she would remember and treasure for a long time. Of course, then she remembered watching in helpless horror as laser fire and ion bolts – fired from a real life Spartas veritech hovertank and Invid fighter bioroid – had vaporised multiple pint-sized demons, demons who'd she'd known weren't demons at all but kids transformed by the same spell that had affected her and everyone else.

 _Whoever cast that spell is going to pay for those deaths when I get back home and find them,_ she thought darkly, the Slayer in her incensed beyond words by the deaths of some of the innocents she'd been chosen by destiny to protect, even as more memories of everything that had happened while she'd literally been Lisa Hunter – who'd used her maiden name in her professional life to avoid confusion in the ranks – fleet admiral and supreme commander of the Robotech Expeditionary Force. Including commanding the battle that had seen the self-proclaimed god Apophis be blasted out of the sky by proton beams fired from this very ship – a ship that was somehow still very real.

Honestly even by Scooby Gang standards this whole thing was well and truly wiggy.

"Has all that really just happened," she couldn't help but ask aloud.

"Yup," Xander confirmed as he moved away to check on Willow. "Buff give me and Tor a hand checking everyone, will you? Something tells me were all going to have a hell of a lot to talk about once we're all awake and coherent. I don't think we're going to be quite able to go back home as if nothing has happened, certainly not considering what our 'changed' selves prevented and the damage to LA."

Buffy nodded in agreement. She didn't have to be the Slayer to know that Xander was right, especially as they'd all obviously been permanently altered by the spell that had been cast upon them. Though she did inwardly have to scream in anger and grief at the mention of the fate that had befallen the city that until two years ago, had been her home. She couldn't help but wonder how many of the people she'd known at Hemery High were now dead or dying in the sea of wreckage and fire that LA had become. Plus, her father still lived in LA was he alive or dead now?

She shook off those thoughts, and the instinctive worry for her father, down with effort even as she stood up from the chair that felt both so foreign and so familiar at the same time. There would be time to think about it all – and almost certainly break down – later. Right now, the others that were here on the bridge needed her help and she was going to provide it.

Which was why she immediately headed over to where Jonathan was sprawled on the deck.

* * *

 **Sunnydale**

 **That Same Time**

"Any sign of them?"

The ensouled vampire known as Angel shook his head as he arrived back in the residence of Rupert Giles. Since they'd broken the spell that Ethan Rayne had cast upon Sunnydale he'd been searching the streets for any sign of Buffy, Xander and Willow. But he'd had absolutely no success – in fact all he'd seen was frantic parents running around searching for several children who'd not returned to the High School after the end of the spell.

"There's no sign of them anywhere, Giles," Angel replied, "it's like they've just disappeared off the face of the Earth. Is Mr Rayne still unconscious?"

"I'm afraid so," Giles answered turning to glare slightly at where Ethan Rayne lay sprawled on his couch watched over like a hawk by Jenny. "Both myself and Jenny have cast diagnostic spells on him and determined that he's suffering from an extremely severe case of magical exhaustion. He obviously seriously underestimated the amount of power that would be required for a spell strong enough to affect the entire town."

"You don't sound convinced of that," Angel pointed out clearly hearing a note of uncertainty in the Watcher's voice when he said that last part.

Giles looked uncomfortable at that but answered nevertheless. "Because I'm not," he admitted with a sigh of resignation. "I have had the misfortune of encountering Ethan Rayne a few times in the past. While he is a worshipper of chaos and an acolyte of the Old God Janus he is normally extremely careful and thorough in his casting preparations. Everything we saw in the back room of his shop is indicative of that.

"No something must have happened, some unknown variable must have come into play, that resulted in the spell requiring Ethan to channel far more power than normal."

"The Hellmouth?" Jenny suggested from where she'd been listening quietly while continuing to watch Ethan. From her own magical studies, both with the elders of her tribe and outside of them as she was one of the few Kalderesh capable of channelling more than just the ancient magics of the Romany people. Technological magic, or technomancy to use its proper name, being one area that was a notable skill of hers which had really helped last year when the demon Molloch The Corrupter got inadvertently released into the Internet.

"Possibly," Giles admitted. "Though I doubt it as demonic and divine magics never mix very well."

"Isn't that the truth," Jenny commented knowing that demonic and divine magics interacting could be like matter and antimatter, the results being explosive to say the least. Indeed, some of the greatest natural catastrophes in history had been caused by such diametrically opposing magical forces interacting. "So, if it wasn't the Hellmouth then what could it be?"

"The only thing I can think of is its Janus himself who has done this," Giles admitted. "Though why I do not know. Unfortunately, we may never be able to find out as the Old Gods don't really interact with the mortal world anymore."

"If Janus is responsible for overpowering the spell so much then could he also have something to do with the disappearance of Buffy and the others?" Angel asked.

"Again, it is a distinct possibility," Giles said agreeing with the ensouled vampire much as he wished he could disagree with him as he didn't particularly care for Angel – though he would admit that he was useful – and only put up with him for Buffy's sake.

"So how do we get them back?"

"I have no idea."

With that confession from Giles everyone in the room went silent, both the two humans and the vampire being lost in their own thoughts and worries especially for Buffy and her two friends. The resulting ominous silence stretching on for what seemed like an eternity.

An eternity that was only broken when a soft groan came from the sofa.

Instantly everyone's attention was focused onto Ethan Rayne just in time to see the chaos mages eyes flicker open. For a few seconds, Ethan, didn't seem to realise or understand where he was and then his wandering gaze fixed on Giles and his shoulders dropped.

"Hello, Ripper," he said in resignation and couldn't help but be shocked by how tired and weak his voice sounded.

"Ethan Rayne," Giles replied crossing his arms, ignoring the questioning looks both Jenny and Angel were shooting him at his youthful nickname, his eyes glittered dangerously as he spoke again. "You've got a lot of questions to answer and answer me you will."

"My how Yoda you sound."

Giles eyes narrowed dangerously. "This is not a game," he snapped resisting just the impulse to walk over and slap his former friend something silly. "And I have no time for your quips. You will answer my questions."

"And if I don't?"

"Then I will ask you," Angel said stepping forward and, to add to the intimidation of the chaos mage, shifted into his game face. "And if you value your life, human, you will answer me."

Ethan cringed back at the sight of the vampire. He'd been wrong, Ripper hadn't changed a bit and had somehow managed to bind a vampire to his will. Something that took some seriously powerful and dark magic indeed. "Okay, okay I'll tell you," he said with a sigh. "What do you want to know?"

"For starters, why exactly you came here to Sunnydale," Giles answered. "And what did you hope to accomplish tonight?"

Ethan sighed again and, seeing no other way of getting out of this without ending up a bloodless corpse, began to talk for his life.

* * *

 **Author Note: Well another chapter bites the dust. Once again sorry it took me so long to get the muse for this story back, hopefully the next chapter will not be long in coming but given how fickle my muse has been recently I obviously cannot make any promises. If anyone is curious the reason why they're coming down in the UK or on one of its outlying islands – when Teal'c said they'd likely come down in North America – is that Teal'c underestimated the particle wave created by the destruction of Klorel's ship as such it knocked the pods onto a new entry vector that will see them come down somewhere in British territorial waters. Anyone got a specific preference as I am personally so tempted to have them come down on one of the generally uninhabited islands like Skomer.**


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